Manhattan's Most Scandalous Reunion by Dani Collins, Caitlin Crews
CHAPTER SIX
JOSSELYNWATCHEDHIMFALL, everything in her seeming to fall with him. Her stomach plummeted to her feet. She flung out her arms as if she could catch him, but missed, doing nothing but rapping her knuckles against the wall.
He twisted in the air, then hit the floor of the next landing with his arms thrust out in front of him, before finally coming to a stop with a sickening thud.
Then he was still.
And this was Cenzo Falcone, so she expected him to leap to his feet again. To rise as if it had been nothing but a trick, so he could laugh at her mockingly all the more. So he could kiss her the way he’d just done, all that wildfire and shocking heat, and make her forget her name all over again—
But though she gripped the stone wall beside her, her eyes fixed on him as he lay there, he did not move.
The only sound was her own heartbeat, a mad racket in her ears, her breath sawing in and out of her as one horrible moment bled into another.
Josselyn threw herself forward, scrabbling down the stairs and dropping to her knees beside him on the lower landing. What if he was dead? What if—?
She couldn’t think it.
A sharp pang bloomed in her chest, feeling too much like grief, but she ignored it. She reached out to touch Cenzo, happier than she wanted to admit that he was warm to the touch and that she could see no distressing, unnatural angles. Her fingers were shaking as she pressed them into his neck, but she was instantly relieved to feel his pulse there. Strong and steady.
“Okay,” she said out loud, shocked at her own breathlessness, and that sharpness within. “Okay, he’s not dead. Good.”
But still he didn’t move. She tried to think of any first aid dos and don’ts she might have picked up on over the years. He had fallen backward, but he’d twisted himself around and had somehow landed on his side. As she stared at him, wishing she’d done something useful with her life so she could handle this well, she could see a large, red bruise forming on his forehead.
She didn’t think he’d suffered a spinal injury, but a head injury probably wasn’t much better.
Josselyn reached for her phone, then stopped in the act of pulling it from her back pocket, swearing under her breath as she remembered. No cell phone service. No Wi-Fi. No possible means of contacting the outside world. She remembered that he’d said something about a radio. But she had no idea where one might be, or even how she would explain where they were or what had happened.
Could she take the time to look? Did she dare leave him? What if he lapsed off and died while she was scrabbling around the old castle for a radio that, for all she knew, he might have lied about having in the first place?
He murmured something then, his voice sounding thick and unused. She didn’t think that he was speaking in English. Or even Italian, for that matter. Josselyn was relieved that he was speaking at all.
And she made a command decision, there and then.
“Come on,” she said briskly, trying to put her arm around his back, thinking that might help him figure out how to get to his feet, since she certainly couldn’t lift him. “Cenzo. You have to get up.”
And to her surprise, he moved. First onto his knees, looking woozy, before pulling himself to his feet. She expected him to blink away the wooziness and then light into her, but he didn’t. He only stared at her as if he couldn’t place her, and then looked as if he might slump there against the wall and topple on the rest of the stairs.
“We have to move,” she told him.
She didn’t question that decision as she helped him down the stairs, sometimes shouldering his weight when he faltered, until they reached the main floor of the renovated bit of the castle.
But she didn’t stop there, either. Because Cenzo moved with her when she encouraged him, clearly in a daze, and that was how she managed to get him all the way down to that rocky little landing on what passed for the beach. One step at a time, while the Sicilian afternoon grew deep gold and a richer blue around them.
The dinghy looked safer for a man of his size, but she led him toward the small sailboat instead, because there was no way she was going to row across the sea. She thought they were just as likely to end up in Greece when her arms gave out and the current took over.
But one thing Josselyn knew how to do was sail.
She raised the sail and was pleasantly surprised to find it intact. Then she managed to get Cenzo into the boat as she pushed off, still not quite thinking through what it was she was doing. There was no medical attention for him on this island. That had to be the priority. For all she knew, if she hadn’t wrestled him down all those stairs, she would still be searching all over the castle for the radio that—best case scenario—he’d probably hidden away to keep her from finding it.
And maybe that was all rationalization so she wouldn’t have to think about things like kissing him until she felt inside out, despite everything he’d said to her this day, much less that grief at the sight of him fallen—but by the time she accepted that she was tacking out of the tiny, rocky cove and heading toward the mainland.
Across from her, Cenzo had slumped down against the gunwale. And no matter how she tried to rouse him with her foot against his leg as well as her voice, he didn’t move.
If she wasn’t mistaken, he was unconscious.
That couldn’t be good.
Josselyn did the only thing she could. She gripped the tiller and kept sailing, letting the wind do the work and hoping that she’d made the right decision.
It had taken her a long time to get Cenzo down those stairs, so she was chasing daylight across the water. As she neared land, she was grateful to see some lights go on ahead of her to show her the way. Because otherwise, who knew where she would have ended up?
She found her way to a tiny harbor and was happy that she could tie the boat up at an actual dock rather than trying to haul it ashore with Cenzo still seemingly unconscious. And then, having done it, she had a moment’s worry as she considered her situation. Should she leave him here? Or try to rouse him again and see if she could make him stumble his way toward whatever kind of village this was? He lay there, slumped against the side of the boat, and even so, there was no mistaking who he was. His power was evident even in repose. But with his eyes closed, it was easier to get lost in the perfectly sculpted lines of his face. To wonder about those stern yet sensual lips of his that she now knew far more intimately—
But there was no time for that, she told herself as the same heat that had overtaken her in that tower stairwell walloped her again. And so inappropriately. The man was hurt, and no matter her feelings about him, she was certainly not going to leave him to die while she dithered about his lips.
That thought spurred her into action. She vaulted out of the sailboat onto the dock, then charged her way up into the village. She slipped the Sicilian Sky off her finger as she walked, tucking it into her pocket, and told herself it was only smart not to brandish such a valuable piece of jewelry about in a strange place where she was more or less on her own.
Once in the tiny medieval village, she used her rusty Italian and got directions, not to a hospital, but to the local doctor.
“A retired doctor, capisci,” said the kindly older man as he and the woman Josselyn had taken for his nurse, but who was likely his wife, rushed with her back down to the docks. “This is a small village. For a hospital it is necessary to go all the way to Taormina, but here I take care of what I can.”
“It’s very kind of you,” Josselyn managed to pant out as they hurried along.
And it took the three of them, working together, to get Cenzo out of the boat. Then to move him along into the town, and to the doctor’s small, makeshift office. Once again, he seemed half-roused but something like drunk as he shambled along, then seemed to pass out when he was lying on the exam table.
“He tripped and fell,” Josselyn told the doctor as he checked Cenzo’s vitals. The older man frowned as he examined that growing bruise on Cenzo’s forehead. “I’m afraid he fell hard, and onto stone.”
“You can wait outside while I check him out, per favore,” the doctor said, in his careful English. “It is better.”
Josselyn agreed that it was. She let herself out of the small medical office that must once have been the house’s front room. Outside, the dark had fallen. She sat down on the step and looked around without seeing much of anything, possibly breathing fully for the first time since Cenzo had kissed her.
Since Cenzo had walked into the cottage in Maine.
She shifted, realizing her phone was still in her back pocket, and pulled it out so she could be more comfortable. But then it was in her hand, so she switched it back on and the screen lit up, reality returning in a rush with each incoming text, email, and message.
He had taken her to the castle to isolate her. But now he was out of commission, or at least slowed down.
Josselyn looked back at the door to the doctor’s office, where Cenzo was now receiving appropriate medical attention. Then back at her phone, which represented freedom. Or at least, the means to put some distance between her and this man who wanted to maroon her on an island until she became an oversexed Stepford wife.
She swiped through to find a map, so she could see where she was. And there was something about that little dot, blinking at her. Telling her that she was right here, in a coastal village only a bit of a drive up the coast from an airport. Here, not imprisoned on a rock in the sea, firmly entrenched in Cenzo’s clutches.
You are here, the dot seemed to say. And you are you, still, despite his best efforts.
Josselyn hooked her free hand over the nape of her neck, squeezing as if that might do something for the tension there. Then she took a few breaths, trying to reset herself. She could still see him falling backward. And that look on his face—not fear or panic, because he was still Cenzo. If anything, he had looked thunderstruck that gravity dared to assert itself upon him.
She almost found that funny now.
Josselyn wanted to call her father to assure him that she was all right, but it occurred to her as she swiped through to her contacts that she had more pressing things to worry about now. First, her father would assume that she was all right, so calling to tell him she was would necessitate telling him what had transpired. And she couldn’t bring herself to break his heart over the phone. Second, and more pressing, Cenzo was likely to wake up fully at any moment, shake himself off, and come after her.
She had absolutely no doubt about that.
And so she had to question why she was sitting there on an old step in this tiny village, wasting precious moments, when what she could be doing was putting space between her and him.
No matter how he tasted. Or how that magical fire seemed to dance in her still.
Focus, she ordered herself.
Over the next half hour or so, out there in an ancient street, she made arrangements as swiftly as possible. At any moment she expected the door behind her to fly open, and the doctor and his nurse to come out, exclaiming the name Falcone to the night sky. It was inevitable, and that meant, ring in her pocket or not, Josselyn needed an escape route.
But when the door opened, it was only the doctor’s wife, and she was smiling. A very soothing, professional sort of smile that was not remotely tainted with the sort of awe and reverence the name Cenzo Falcone generally inspired.
Josselyn smiled back, and hoped she looked... Well, whatever would be appropriate if she hadn’t just put into motion an escape plan while her husband of less than a day lay in an exam room nearby with a head injury.
“He’s looking much better,” the woman said, more in Italian than English, but she spoke slowly enough that Josselyn could pick it up well enough. “But he is, how you say, he does not...” She pointed at herself, moving her finger over her face. “He cannot say who he is.”
Josselyn nodded, trying to look serious. When secretly, she was perhaps slightly relieved that it sounded like he’d hurt his jaw in the fall. Which would save her his scathing remarks.
“You could take him to hospital,” the woman continued. “In Taormina.”
“He really can’t speak?”
“Confused,” the woman said, then shrugged, indicating with some pantomime that Josselyn should follow her inside.
Josselyn responded with even more pantomime that she would follow in a moment, pointing at her phone. She considered her options when the door closed, leaving her outside again, and as she did an SUV pulled up before her. And behind it, another vehicle, but this one with rental hire information on its side.
“You made it here so quickly,” she said to the driver of the SUV. “I’m very impressed.”
“Grazie,”the man said, smiling broadly. “It was nothing.”
Because it turned out that when offered an incredible gratuity on top of an already expensive request for speed, people were only too happy to oblige.
“Hold on one moment,” she told him, calculating possibilities as quickly as she could. “I might have another job for you. Is that okay?”
The driver assured her that it was more than okay, so Josselyn turned and went back inside the doctor’s office.
She braced herself for a round of questions and accusations about what it was she was doing with a man as easily recognizable as Cenzo Falcone, but when she pushed her way into the exam room, the doctor only smiled and asked her to step back out so they could discuss his condition.
Josselyn took a moment, looking past the doctor to where Cenzo stared back at her, his eyes open and an expression she could not possibly begin to categorize in those ancient eyes of his.
She shivered as she followed the doctor into the next room.
“He is awake now, this is good,” the older man told her. “It is my opinion that if you watch him tonight and make sure there is no concussion and no more unconsciousness, maybe no hospital is necessary. Where did this happen? On your little sailboat?”
“Oh,” she said airily, not sure why something in her cautioned her against telling the truth. “We made a day out of it. A pretty sail, stopping along the way to climb on rocks and things.”
She expected the doctor to question her further on that, but he only nodded. “The concern is that he slipped in and out of consciousness a few times. Maybe this could happen again. At the hospital, they will be able to monitor him, make sure that all he suffers is this bruise, you understand.”
“I thought he was confused, too?”
“He didn’t want to tell us his name.” But the doctor shrugged. “There are many people who react like this when they wake up to find themselves somewhere strange. Maybe this is nothing.”
What it sounded like to Josselyn was that the mighty Cenzo Falcone did not wish it to be known that he had been laid low in this fashion. No doubt his ego wouldn’t allow it. She nodded sagely. “My car is outside, so it will be easy enough to transport him. I really can’t thank you enough for your help. What do I owe you?”
The older doctor looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to be insulted or amused. “This is not necessary. We are in Italia, sì? He is okay, this is the important thing.”
Josselyn thanked him, and then there was nothing to do—especially as the doctor and his wife gazed at her so expectantly—but step back into the exam room.
And face Cenzo at last.
He was sitting up on the side of the bed, that livid, darkening bruise doing nothing to dim the ferocity of his gaze. He looked rumpled and impatient and alarmingly sexy, and it was that last part that she was going to have to come to terms with, Josselyn knew. But not here. Not now. Not until she handled the details of this as any decent person would, and then made good her escape.
“There’s a car for you outside,” she told him in as steady a voice as she could manage. “It will take you to the hospital. Or wherever you want to go, if the standard of care at the Taormina hospital is not to your liking.”
Cenzo continued to stare at her, looking more and more thunderous by the moment. He swallowed, as if his throat was dry. Then his head tilted slightly to one side, and she could tell by how gingerly he did it that even that little movement hurt him.
Josselyn supposed she was a great fool, because she didn’t like to think of him hurting. It made her stomach go hollow again. Even when she knew that his entire aim where she was concerned was to make sure she hurt. And, through her, to hurt her father too.
Well, she told herself tartly, you might not get applause for being the bigger person, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it anyway.
And maybe, she thought then, he hadn’t been as off base with his comments about her martyr complex as she’d wanted to imagine.
He was continuing to stare at her in that same way, as if he couldn’t make sense of her, and it made her uneasy. Or anyway, that was how she chose to interpret the spike of heat and sensation low in her belly.
“It’s encouraging that you’re sitting up,” she said brightly. “I thought for a moment there that you’d suffered something truly terrible, like a spinal injury. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, thank goodness.”
Cenzo’s head tilted again, slightly more. Just slightly.
“I have no idea who you are.” And his tone was accusing, as if it was clear to him that she’d done something to him. He shook his head slightly, then winced. “But perhaps this is of no matter, because I do not seem to know who I am, either.”
Josselyn could not have heard that correctly. “What do you mean? Exactly?”
He made an expression of distaste, and the impatience she’d seen in his expression intensified. “What I said. You are looking at me and speaking to me as if you know me, but I am certain I have never seen you before. And when the doctor asked me my name, I opened my mouth to tell him but nothing came to mind. Can you explain this?”
And wasn’t that the Cenzo Falcone experience in a nutshell, Josselyn thought as she tried to take that in. The man had woken up to find himself in a medical facility with no memory, and his first reaction was not fear or concern. Perish the thought! He instead demanded that others provide him with explanations.
“All right,” she said as calmly as she could. “That’s a curveball, certainly. What do you remember?”
He considered, then slowly shook his head—wincing once again, as if he’d forgotten he was hurt. “It is as if it is on the tip of my tongue, yet nothing comes. As if I need to concentrate, but when I do, there is nothing. A blankness.”
“Nothing at all?” Her pulse picked up and ran. “Not even a shred of something?”
“I know I am speaking English to you, though I spoke Italian to the doctor,” he said, his tone withering. Apparently that much was innate. He gestured at his own torso. “I know that I am fit and in excellent health. The doctor told me we were sailing and I can picture sailboats, the sea, beaches and tides...” He lifted a shoulder. “But none of it is specific. None of it is mine.”
Josselyn’s heart was beating much too fast. Of all the things she’d worried might happen, this hadn’t rated so much as a stray thought. Because it was madness. So mad she almost thought he had to be faking it to see what she would do...
Except she couldn’t imagine any scenario in which Cenzo Falcone would pretend for even one moment to be anything less than what he was. To appear in any way impaired, or seemingly helpless—not that he was acting as if he was either of those things.
On the contrary, he was lounging there on a hospital bed as if he believed that if he simply made enough demands of her, he would remember himself.
“Clearly you know more than I do,” he said then, again with that note of accusation and a banked fury in his old coin gaze. “Perhaps you would do me the favor of telling me something. Like my name.”
Only this man would wake with amnesia and fail to find the experience even remotely humbling. Josselyn almost wanted to laugh.
“Your name is Cenzo,” she told him, and she expected to see a light bulb go off in him. She expected to see the centuries of Falcone arrogance slam back into place. She watched those eyes of his, waiting for them to change from simply cool and watchful to that full-on predator’s stare that made her shiver just thinking about it.
“Cenzo,” he repeated, as if trying out the name. “I assume that is short for Vincenzo? I do not feel as if I am a man with a nickname, if I am honest. It seems... Beneath me.”
Of course it does,Josselyn thought. And managed, somehow, to keep from rolling her eyes.
“I have no idea if it’s a nickname or not,” she told him. He had a great many names, after all. Who was to say that Cenzo wasn’t one of them? She hadn’t been paying close attention during that part of their wedding ceremony. She had been far too busy ordering herself to stand still and look graceful, rather than turning on her heel and bolting back down the aisle to get away from him.
“The doctor made it sound as if you were my wife,” Cenzo said, a heavy kind of disapproval all over him. Because along with the accusation and arrogance, he had apparently remained judgmental, too. “Can this be so if you know so little about your own husband?”
And Josselyn’s heart beat even faster. She felt herself grow warm, but this time, not because of anything he was doing. But because of her own audacity.
Because she couldn’t seem to stave off the truly insane idea that had come to her. And no matter how she tried to push it aside, it seemed to grow larger and wider inside her.
Until it was all she could think about.
Because if ever there was a man on this earth who deserved a little bit of humbling, it was this one.
She stared back at him, her mind racing. She would have to rent an actual motorboat, or buy one, whatever. That way, she could monitor him herself and if there was trouble, get him back to land more quickly. That was the main thing.
Are you really debating doing this?a voice inside her asked. You know it’s wrong.
She did. But maybe there were degrees of wrong. Because she had not signed up to be the object of his unhinged revenge conspiracies. And yet he had carried her off to that ruin of a rock, mocked and threatened her, and had been very explicit about what he planned to do to her while she was there.
And she believed that if he hadn’t fallen, he would have set about doing exactly what he’d promised. He had already been doing it, she thought, remembering that kiss.
So really, what was the harm in turning the tables?
Unlike him, she had no intention of actually hurting anyone. Unlike him, she had no ulterior motive. This was an opportunity for the great Cenzo Falcone to see the world a little bit differently, for a change. That was all.
Maybe, she told herself piously, it might even make him a better person. In the end.
She couldn’t deny that beyond all of that, she would certainly enjoy watching her powerful, overwhelming husband cut down to palatable size.
“Well?” he demanded. “Have you anything to say for yourself?”
And that sealed it, really. Because even now, when he had no idea who she was, what the relationship was, or even who he was, that was how he spoke to her. As if she owed him her instant obedience.
Oh, yes, she was definitely going to enjoy this.
And she would worry, later, about how it made her a terrible person.
She would worry later—when their month on that rock was up, no real harm was done, and maybe, just maybe, the vainglorious Cenzo Falcone had learned a lesson.
“I’m afraid the doctor put ideas in your head,” she said, and smiled. “And because you’ve been banged up today, I will forgive it. But you do not normally speak to me in this manner, Cenzo.”
She already enjoyed it. That was the truth of it. She already wanted to laugh out loud, she enjoyed it so much.
Instead, Josselyn held his gaze. “You’re my servant.”