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her breasts, sucking the nipples deep into his mouth, then gently spread her thighs and gave her

clitoris that same intense care. And while she was sobbing from her first orgasm, he turned her

on her belly, kissed the nape of her neck, the sensitive places behind her ears, stroked his hand

down her spine, followed that same path with his lips, then cupped his hand between her legs,

groaning with pleasure at how her body wept with desire for him, for his penetration.

“Please,” his wife whispered, “Raffaele, please…”

He eased her onto her knees. Slid slowly, slowly inside her, his hands cupping her breasts, his

breathing harsh as he fought for control. She cried out as her second orgasm took her. Then, only

then, Rafe let go, let his control shatter, his emotions soar as the truth filled him with almost

unbearable joy.

He was in love with his wife.

After, he opened a bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape and poured glasses of the rich, red wine for

them both.

Though it was fall, it was not really cool enough for a fire. Still, he built one in the massive stone fireplace, dumped a couple of fat couch pillows in front of it, wrapped his wife and himself in a

black cashmere afghan and sat holding her in his arms as they watched the flames and drank the

wine.

The knowledge that he loved her weighed inside him.

He had not wanted Chiara, because his father had ordered him to want her. Now he wanted her

with all his heart—but what if she didn’t want him?

What if she wanted the quick divorce he’d promised her? Yes, that was before all the rest, the

hours in each other’s arms, but he wasn’t a boy, he was a man. He knew damned well making

love wasn’t the same as being in love.

She’d lived the life of a fairy-tale Rapunzel, locked away in a castle. She’d been lonely.

Innocent. Afraid of being given to a man who was an ogre. He’d come along and changed all

that. If he told her he loved her, she might feel grateful enough to say she loved him, too, and

gratitude was the last thing he wanted.

What if he wanted her…and she wanted her freedom?

When had things become so complicated?

He looked down at his wife, lying peacefully in his embrace, her head against his naked chest,

her eyes half-closed, the dark lashes curved against her cheeks. His heart swelled with love.

Why was he trying to work this like an equation? He had to tell her what he felt, just say,

“Chiara, sweetheart, I don’t want a divorce. I want you. I need you. I love—”

The intercom buzzed.

Rafe frowned. Who could it be? He certainly wasn’t expecting anyone.

Chiara looked at him. “Raffaele? What is that?”

“It’s nothing, sweetheart. Just the intercom. It’ll stop after a—”

Bzzzz.

Ah-ha. The Saks delivery. Rafe bit back a smile, kissed the top of her head and eased her off his

lap. “It’s the doorman. Must be a delivery. He’s authorized to sign for me but…” He smiled. “I’ll

be right back.”

But it wasn’t a delivery. It was, the doorman said, his brothers. Two of them, anyway. They had

their own elevator keys and they’d gone straight by him. In fact, they were pressing the call bell

right now and considering that Mr. Orsini and his lady guest had, um, had gone upstairs rather

hastily.

Rafe slammed down the phone. He could hear the gentle hum of the car starting its descent.

Bewildered, he ran his hand through his hair. Two of his brothers. Nicolo and Falco, probably,

unless Dante was back in town and—and what in hell did that matter? His brothers were on their

way.

And Chiara was naked in his living room.

He ran to her. Took her hand and pulled her to her feet.

“Raffaele?”

“It’s okay,” he said as they raced up the stairs. “It’s just that my brothers are here.”

Her gasp almost suctioned all the air out of the stairwell. “Dio mio! Your brothers? But we are—

”

“Right.” He shouldered open the door to his room, almost broke his neck tripping over the

dozens of boxes and shopping bags piled on the floor. “I haven’t told them anything about—I

haven’t said a word to anyone about—” He took a breath. “Just get dressed, baby, okay? I’ll

handle the rest.”

“Get dressed in what? This is not my room, it is yours.”

“Yeah. Okay, but there’s stuff here.” He gestured at the packages. “The things you tried on this

morning.”

“You bought it all?”

“Yes. So just grab something and—”

“But I told you—”

“This is no time to argue!” Rafe hurried into his dressing room, yanked on a pair of jeans, tugged

a T-shirt over his head and heard Nick’s voice drifting up the stairs.

“Rafe? Are you up there, man?”

Chiara froze. So did he. “Raffaele?” she whispered.

Rafe shook his head, held up his hand. “I’ll be right down.”

“We’ll come up if—”

“No! No, that’s okay. I’m on my way.”

“Raffaele.” His wife was the color of cream. “My clothes…they are all over the living room!”

So were his. Damn. It was face-the-music time. A couple of minutes from now his brothers

would know all about Chiara. That he had gone to Italy, that he had married her against his better

judgment…

That he loved her.

The timing sucked. They’d know that last part before she did but what the hell, if there was one

thing life had taught him, it was that you played the cards you were dealt even if they weren’t the

ones you’d have preferred.

He took a couple of breaths, then went to the door.

“Raffaele, wait!”

Chiara flew to him, wrapped her arms around his neck, rose on her toes and kissed him. He took

her by the wrists and drew her hands to her sides.

“We have to talk.”

He sounded more serious than she had ever heard him sound. The look in his eyes was serious,

too. A chill swept through her.

“Talk about what, Raffaele?”

She saw his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed.

“About us.” He lifted his hand as if he might cup her cheek but he didn’t. Instead he headed for

the stairs.

FALCO and Nick were on the terrace, deep in conversation.

Rafe knew they were talking about him. He hadn’t gone to the office in over a week. He’d shown

up at The Bar and behaved like a crazy man, and today, again, he hadn’t shown up at work.

Yeah. Well, okay. The sooner he told them what was going on, the better.

First he’d get rid of that telltale pile of clothes by the sofa. Maybe they hadn’t noticed it. He

could just grab the stuff, like this, open a door of the built-in sound system and jam it all inside.

Good. Excellent. Now take another deep breath—he was becoming an expert at those—and join

them on the terrace.

“Hi,” he said brightly.

His brothers turned toward him. They looked grim.

“Great idea, coming out here,” he said so cheerfully that he felt like a TV commercial. “The sun,

the blue sky—”

“What’s going on?” Falco said.

“Going on?”

“You heard him,” Nick said. “What’s the deal with you?”

“No deal.” This was going to be harder than he’d thought. “I just…I just—”

“You haven’t come to the office in days.”

Falco’s tone annoyed him. “What, I need a note from Mama saying why I’m absent?”

“Are you sick?”

“Am I—?” Rafe shook his head. They were worried about him, was all. His expression softened.

“No, Nicolo. I’m not.”

Nick and Falco exchanged looks. Then Nick reached into the pocket of his suit jacket.

“You left this in the elevator.”

He looked at what was in Nick’s hand. Hell. Chiara’s white cotton panties. He’d forgotten to tell

the clerk at Saks to provide his wife with lingerie, but it didn’t matter; there was something about

all that innocent white cotton that—

“Rafe?”

His head came up. Nick’s eyebrows were raised. So were Falco’s.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, and grabbed the panties from his brother.

“Either you’ve taken to cross-dressing,” Falco said calmly, “or more than the elevator was going

down.”

Another time Rafe would have laughed. Now he was too busy trying to stuff the panties into his

pocket.

“Very amusing.”

“Does this have to do with that woman you said was staying here?”

“No. Yes.” Rafe glared at Nick. “Hey, man, what is this? An interrogation?”

His brothers looked at each other again.

“It’s called brotherly concern,” Falco said wryly. “It’s what happens when you have a brother

who’s always behaved a certain way and all of a sudden he begins doing stuff that doesn’t make

sense.”

“Look, I’m fine. Okay? I’m not a kid. And—”

“We’re worried about you, man.”

Rafe’s righteous indignation vanished. They were worried. He could see it. Besides, putting this

off wouldn’t make the telling any easier.

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Uh, anybody for a beer?”

“No,” Falco growled.

Nick gave him a sharp elbow in the ribs. “Beer sounds good.”

Falco glared at him. Nick shrugged his shoulders, raised his eyebrows, did everything he could to

transmit the message. Back off. Give him time. Don’t crowd him. Okay?

A muscle ticked in Falco’s jaw. He was not good at backing off, but after a couple of seconds he

nodded.

“Beer’s fine.”

The brothers marched into the kitchen. Nick almost tripped over a woman’s high-heeled boot. He

grinned, gave Falco another elbow. Falco looked, grinned, but then the two of them frowned.

The situation might have been funny, but it wasn’t. They had come here worried that Rafe was

sick. Now they knew whatever was wrong with him had something to do with a woman. A

woman for whom he’d lost a week’s worth of appointments. A woman he was so hot for he’d

undressed her in his elevator. Okay, sure, each of them had done the elevator bit or something

close to it, but for one of them to change the very pattern of his life…

Not good. Not good at all.

They took the cold, sweating bottles of beer Rafe took from the Sub-Zero fridge. Opened the

bottles, drank, wiped the backs of their hands across their mouths, gave him time, gave him time,

gave him—

“I got married.”

Nick’s beer bottle slipped through his hand. He made a last-minute grab and caught it, but not

before half its contents spilled on his shoes. The bottle in Falco’s hand tilted, sending a waterfall

of beer down the front of his suit.

“You what?”

Rafe raised his shoulders, let them drop.

“I got married. A week ago.”

Nick looked at Falco. “He got married.”

Falco nodded. “The white underpants.”

“He married a woman who wears white—”

“Okay,” Rafe said coldly, “that’s enough. We’re not going to do a comedy riff on my wife’s

underwear.”

Silence. Then Nick cleared his throat. “Fine. What we’d really like to discuss is your wife.”

Rafe hesitated. Then he gave another of those shrugs. “Yeah. I just—The thing is, I don’t know

where to start.”

“The beginning almost always works,” Falco said quietly.

Rafe nodded. He put his bottle of beer on the counter. His brothers did the same. Then they

wandered into the living room, sat down, and Rafe began to talk.

He did as Falco had suggested. Began at the beginning, at the meeting called by their father.

“The old man was at his best,” he said grimly. “He didn’t just talk about dying, he talked about

his soul.”

His brothers snorted. “What soul?” Nick said.

“I told him that, but he insisted he’d done something years ago, in Sicily, and now he had to

make up for it.”

“And what did that have to do with you? For that matter, what does it have to do with your

getting married?”

“He said the only way to make up for what he’d done was for me to go to San Giuseppe—”

“Where he was born?”

“Right. He wanted me to go there and marry the daughter of a Sicilian don.”

“And you told him what he could do with that request,” Falco said.

“I did. I told him there was no way in the world I’d do it. Trouble was, I’d already given my

word that I’d help him with the immortal soul nonsense.” Rafe paused, tried to pretend his

brothers weren’t looking at him as if he’d lost his mind. “So I said, okay, I’d fly to Sicily but I

sure as hell wasn’t marrying anybody.”

“Then, how’d you end up marrying this—this hoodlum princess?”

“She’s not,” Rafe said sharply. “She’d not anything like that.”

“Sorry,” Falco said coolly. “How’d you end up putting a ring on a stranger’s finger?”

Rafe laughed. “Actually, I haven’t. Not yet. It was—it was a kind of quick thing, you know? See,

what happened was…”

Was what?

He thought about how Chiara had waylaid him on the road from Palermo. He thought of the first

time he’d kissed her. They didn’t need to hear all that. It was too personal, too much a part of

what he and his wife had immediately felt for each other and tried to deny. Instead, he told them

the only part that counted. The ultimatum handed down by her father, that if Rafe didn’t marry

her, he would give her to his brute of a capo.

Nick swore softly.

Rafe nodded. “I didn’t have any choice. I said I’d marry her. And I did.”

“You had a choice,” Falco said. “You could have walked away.”

“Would you?”

Falco gave him a long, assessing look. Then he shrugged. “Okay. You married her. Brought her

to the States. And then what? Surely you told her you weren’t doing this for real.”

“Of course!” Rafe dug his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and began to pace. “Would I