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BlackBerry and find the names of a dozen women who’d sleep with him and be happy about it?

Beautiful women. Sexy women. Women who’d make this one look like Little Orphan Annie.

“I am talking about female compliance in general and, yes, that would include—it would

include—”

“Sex.” He smiled tightly. “You can say the word. It won’t pollute you.”

Her color went from deep pink to bright red. “I know it is difficult for you to believe, but not

every woman wants to pretend she enjoys being the recipient of a man’s most base desires.”

Whoa. Her attitude definitely needed updating, but that would be some other man’s problem, not

his. Why not tell her she had nothing to worry about? Divorce was just a phone call away—

“Perhaps you think you are entitled to…to special privileges because you supposedly saved me

from Giglio.”

Whatever hackles were, he could damn near feel his rise. “Supposedly?”

Chiara shrugged. “You said it yourself. You had every intention of marrying me all along.”

“I said that because I was angry. You know damned well I only did it because your old man

threatened to hand you over to his capo.”

“Why should I believe you now?” Her smile was like ice. “After all, signor, you lie with such

ease.”

Okay. Enough. He’d taken one insult too many. It was time to let the lady stew in her own juices

for a while.

“You know,” he said coldly, “I’ve had enough of this nonsense to last a lifetime. It’s bedtime.”

All the color drained from her face. She’d misunderstood him. He opened his mouth to explain,

but before he could say a word, she spat out a Sicilian phrase he’d never heard anywhere but on

the streets of his youth.

“Right,” he said through his teeth, “that’s precisely what I am.”

He strode purposefully toward her, grabbed her arm and yanked her toward him. She cried out,

struggled, and on a curse the equal of hers, he lifted her into his arms and carried her up the

staircase to the second floor, down the hall and into one of the guest rooms where he dumped her

in the center of the bed.

She scrambled back against the pillows. Her hair was a tangle of wild curls. Her ugly coat had

come open, exposing her ludicrous outfit…

Her amazingly sexy outfit.

Her breasts, shadowed beneath the thin cotton of his T-shirt. Her nipples, pebbled and just

waiting for the touch of his fingers, the heat of his mouth…

Rafe stepped back. Jerked his head toward a half-open door.

“Your bathroom’s through there. There’s a clean toothbrush in the vanity. Toothpaste. Towels.

Soap. Shampoo. Whatever else you might need.”

“If you think I’m going to…to prepare myself for you—”

“If you did, you’d be wasting your time. I like my women soft, feminine and sexy. You don’t

even approach that description. No wonder your old man had to find you a husband.”

It was a good line, and he made the most of it by walking out.

He was halfway down the hall when he heard her door slam hard enough to rattle the walls. For

some crazy reason, it made him smile.

A hot shower, then bed.

That was what he needed.

The shower was fine. So was the bed until he turned the sheets into a tangled mess. After an hour

of trying to sleep, he gave up, lay back and watched the digital alarm clock blink away the

minutes.

Two a.m. Three. Four. Damn it, he had to be at work in the morning. He didn’t have time for

this.

Maybe he ought to phone his lawyer now. Yeah, it was the middle of the night, but so what? He

had Marilyn Sayers on retainer. A big, fat retainer. The whole point of it was so that he could

contact her anytime, anyplace, about anything….

Rafe got out of bed, pulled on a pair of old gray sweatpants. What difference would it make if he

spoke to Sayers now or later? She was a top-notch legal eagle; this was a simple divorce. An

hour or two wouldn’t mean a thing.

He’d wait.

He thought about going for a run in the park, but that would have meant leaving Chiara alone in

the apartment. Somehow, that didn’t seem wise. He had a bottle of sleeping tablets in the

medicine cabinet, something the doctor had given him a couple of years ago after minor surgery

on his knee—he’d torn a tendon in a motorcycle accident. But he’d never taken even one of the

pills and he wasn’t about to start now.

A shot of brandy. That would do it.

It did.

Twenty minutes after he drank the Courvoisier, Rafe got into bed and tumbled into sleep.

Something woke him.

He wasn’t sure what it was. A sound, but what? Not his alarm. The red numbers on the clock

were steady at 5:05 a.m., which meant he had fifty-five minutes until the thing went off.

There it was again. A noise. Faint but…A cry? That was it. A cry. Weeping.

Hell. It was Chiara.

He sat up in bed, rubbed his hands over his stubbled jaw and cheeks. Now what? Did he ignore

it? Might as well. Let her cry. Who gave a damn? Every time he tried to treat her with kindness,

she reacted like a junkyard dog.

He lay back against the pillows again, stacked his arms beneath his head. She was unhappy? He

wasn’t exactly ecstatic. If she was crying, it was her business.

But it didn’t stop. Well, so what? He’d heard women cry before. Ingrid, for example, just a

couple of days ago…Just a lifetime ago. But it hadn’t been like this. Sad. Desperate. As if the

sobs were being torn from Chiara’s soul.

Rafe threw back the covers, got to his feet, headed for the door and then for the guest suite,

where he paused. “Chiara?”

At first he thought the sobs had stopped. They hadn’t. They’d just grown muffled. She was

crying as if her heart might break.

“Chiara,” he said again, and tapped lightly on the door. Still no answer. He took a breath. Then,

carefully, he tried the knob.

It turned, and the door swung open.

The room was in darkness, but she’d left the bathroom light on and the door partly open. He

could see the huddled form visible in the center of the bed.

Rafe called her name again. Still, no answer. Slowly, certain he was going to regret this, certain

she’d rear up, scream the bloody building down when she realized he was in her bedroom, he

made his way forward and sat down, gingerly, on the edge of the mattress. He could see her now,

part of her, at least; she was just a small, sad lump under the duvet, on her belly, her face buried

against the pillows.

His heart constricted. She was small and frightened and he’d known that and added to it.

Without thinking, he reached out and laid his hand gently against her hair.

“Chiara, sweetheart, I’m sorry. Please, don’t cry…”

The bedclothes seemed to explode. Rafe braced himself for a scream, a shout, a right to the

jaw…But none of that happened. Chiara launched herself at him, wound her arms around his

neck and buried her damp face against his naked shoulder.

Stunned, he sat absolutely still. Then, slowly, he slipped his arms around her. Filled them with

soft, warm, trembling woman.

He shut his eyes.

Holding her felt wonderful. And she smelled good. His soap. His shampoo. And mingling with

their scents, essence of woman. Of Chiara.

Of his wife.

His body stirred. Silently he cursed himself for it. There was nothing sexual happening here.

Dawn was about to break over a sleeping city and he had a weeping woman in his arms.

Remember that, Orsini, he told himself sternly.

“Chiara,” he said gently. “What is it? Did you have a nightmare?”

She nodded. Her hair, all those dark and lovely curls, slid like feather wisps against his skin. He

shut his eyes again, drew her closer, held her more tightly against his heart.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She shook her head.

“No. Okay. Fine. You don’t have to—”

“I dreamed it was my wedding night.”

A muscle knotted in his jaw. It was her wedding night. A hell of a thing to know that he was her

nightmare.

“It’s all right, baby. Nothing will happen to you. I promise.”

“My wedding night with…with Giglio.”

A nightmare, all right. Rafe’s arms tightened around her.

“Shh, sweetheart. It was just a bad dream.”

A shudder went through her. “It was so real. His hands on me. His mouth.”

“Shh,” Rafe said again, an unreasoning rage filling him at the picture she’d painted. “Giglio can’t

get to you. Not anymore.”

Silence. Another shudder. Then, a whisper so low he could hardly hear it.

“What?” he said, and bent his head closer to hers.

“I said…I said I have been awful to you, Raffaele. You saved me from him. And instead of

saying thank you, I have accused you of…of all kinds of terrible things.”

He smiled. “Seems to me we’ve done a pretty good job of accusing each other of all kinds of

terrible things.”

“It is only that I never expected any of this to happen. My father had threatened to marry me to

an American but—”

“Just what every guy hopes,” Rafe said, trying to lighten things. “To be a beautiful woman’s

worst nightmare.”

His little attempt at humor flew straight over her head. “No,” she said quickly, “I did not dream

of you, Raffaele, I dreamed of—”

“I know. I only meant…Chiara, you have to believe me. My father wanted me to marry you, yes,

but I didn’t have any intention of doing it. Not that a man wouldn’t be lucky to marry you,” he

added quickly, “but—”

Her hand lifted; she placed her fingers lightly over his lips.

“It…it isn’t that I don’t want to be your wife. It’s that I do not want to be any man’s wife. Do

you understand?”

He didn’t. Not really. He’d been dating women since he’d turned sixteen and he’d never yet

come across one whose ultimate goal, no matter what she claimed, wasn’t marriage.

Then he thought of what he knew of the woman in his arms. Her father’s domination. Her

isolation. Above everything else, her fear of sex, a fear he’d done little to ease over the past

several hours.

“Truly,” she said, “it is not you. It would be any man.” She drew back in his arms, her face

turned up to his, her eyes brilliant, her dark lashes spiky with tears. “Do you see?”

God, she was so beautiful! So vulnerable, lying back in his arms…

“Yes,” he said, his voice a little rough, “I do see. But you need to know—you need to know not

all men are beasts, sweetheart.”

A wan smile curved her lips. “Perhaps you are the exception.”

The exception? If he were, his body wouldn’t be responding to the tender warmth of hers. He

wouldn’t be looking at her and wondering if her mouth tasted as sweet as he remembered, if she

was naked under the oversize cotton thing he assumed was a nightgown.

“I…I appreciate your decency,” she said, and every miserable male instinct he owned shrieked,

Yeah? Then how about proving it?

He sat up straight, all but tore Chiara’s encircling arms from his neck and set her back against the

pillows, grateful—hell, hopeful—that his baggy sweats would hide the effect she’d had on him.

“Well,” he said brightly, “you’ll be okay now.” She didn’t answer. “So, ah, so try to get some

sleep.” Still no answer. He cleared his throat. “Chiara? About that divorce?”

“Yes?”

The hopeful note in the single word would have thrilled him if this were Ingrid or any one of a

hundred other women. As it was, it only made him feel a pang of remorse.

“I’ll phone my attorney first thing in the morning and get it started.”

She gave a deep sigh. “Grazie bene, Raffaele. The jewels—”

“Forget about them. They’re yours.”

“I can, at least, use them to pay my share of the legalities.”

“I said, I don’t want them.” He knew he sounded harsh but, damn it, did she really think he’d let

her pay for the severance of their marriage? Okay, it was a bogus marriage but still…“I’d prefer

you keep them,” he said, trying for a calmer tone.

“Grazie. I can use the money they bring to live on. New York is expensive, yes?”

“New York is expensive, yes. But it won’t be so bad. Not with alimony.”

“Alimony?”

Alimony? his baffled brain echoed. A settlement was bad enough but alimony? Why would he

pay alimony to a woman who’d been his wife for, what, twenty-four hours?

“I do not expect alimony, Raffaele. We have not had a real marriage.”

“Yeah, but this is America. Everybody pays alimony,” he said with a straight face, even though

he could already hear his lawyer screaming in legal horror.

Chiara smiled. “I think,” she said, very softly, “I think, perhaps, you are an honorable man,

Raffaele Orsini.”

Guilt made his jaw tighten. She wouldn’t think that if she could see the response of his body to

the soft hand she laid upon his thigh. He took that hand, gave it a brisk little shake and stood up.

“Okay,” he said brightly, “sleep time.”

Her smile faded.

“You won’t have that bad dream again,” Rafe said softly. She didn’t answer and he cleared his

throat. “If you like—if you like, I’ll sit in that chair until you doze off.”

“Would you mind?”

“Mind? No. I’m happy to do it.”

“It would be comfortable for you?”

Comfortable? Not in this lifetime. The chair in question was a Queen Anne, a Marie Antoinette,

a Lady Godiva or something like that. It was puny looking. He’d put his own stamp on the living

room, the library, the dining room and his bedroom, but he’d grown impatient after a while and

turned the interior decorator loose on the guest rooms. One result was this chair. It might hold a