The Sicilian's Bought Cinderella

She clamped a hand to her mouth and shook her head.

Her heart pounded so hard she felt sick with the ripples. Panic tore at her throat.

Oh, dear God, she was in love with Dante.

What else explained the agony she had carried every minute of the thirteen days since she’d left Sicily?

Every night she went to bed and said a prayer for the pain in her heart to ease by the morning, but every morning she awoke after a fitful sleep with the pain a little worse.

Her appetite had gone to pot. She drank gallons of tea but could not stomach coffee because the mere smell of it reminded her of Dante.

Even looking at her own sister was painful because she could see the physical similarities between them.

Life had turned on its head for the better for the O’Reillys but Aislin had entered a living form of purgatory.

Orla read the despair on her sister’s face, watched it crumble and watched her legs fall beneath her as she collapsed onto the wet floor, all of it happening as if in slow motion, and dived down to wrap her arms around her.

Aislin buried her face in her sister’s comforting shoulder and, finally, the tears she’d held back for so long could no longer stay contained.

Orla stroked her back and her hair, trying her hardest to comfort her, letting her sister’s hot tears soak through her jumper until there were no tears left to cry.

* * *

‘Ash?’ Orla stepped into the bedroom.

Aislin rolled over and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Sunlight poured in through the thin curtains.

She must have slept for hours.

All that crying on Orla’s shoulder and her overdue confession of her feelings for Dante had gone on until the early hours. The weight of it had exhausted her. She’d fallen asleep the moment her head had hit the pillow.

‘What time is it?’

‘Ten o’clock.’

So much for sleep being such a great healer. She still felt dreadful.

Sighing, she sat up as Orla perched on the bed beside her and held an envelope to her. ‘This was delivered before I got up this morning.’

Aislin took the envelope with only her name scrawled on it. There was something lumpy and weighty in it.

She ripped it open.

A rose-gold pear-diamond ring fell onto the duvet.

Orla gasped.

Aislin could only stare at it as if it were something that could bite her.

‘Is there a letter?’

Orla’s voice cut through the roaring in her head.

She tried to breathe.

Fingers trembling, Aislin pulled out the note. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly.

Orla elbowed her ribs. ‘Read it.’