Taming the Notorious Sicilian

The big pile of poker chips was hers.

It would appear that her long-practised poker face had become a blessing in itself.

* * *

Francesco could hardly believe what he was witnessing over the monitors.

Hannah was a card shark. There was no other way to describe the way she played, which, if you were in a position to see the cards she’d been dealt, as he was, at times verged on the reckless. Not that her opponents could see how recklessly she played. All they saw was the cool facade, the face that didn’t give away a single hint of emotion.

For a woman who had never played the game before, it was masterful. And yet...

Something deep inside his gut clenched when he considered why she’d been able to develop such a good poker face. Only someone who’d spent years hiding their emotions could produce it so naturally. He should know. He’d been perfecting his own version for years.

When she’d knocked her fourth opponent out... The way she’d pushed her chips forward, the clear simpatico way she’d said, ‘All in...’

His gut had tightened further. Somehow he’d known those two little words meant more than just the chips before her.

It didn’t take long before she’d demolished her final opponent. Only when she’d won that final hand did that beautiful smile finally break on her face, a smile of genuine delight that had all her defeated opponents reaching over to shake her hand and kiss her cheeks. The mostly male crowd surrounding her also muscled in, finding it necessary to embrace her when giving their congratulations.

They wouldn’t look twice if they could see her in her usual state, Francesco thought narkily. They would be so blinkered they would never see her for the natural beauty she was.

‘I’m going back down,’ he said, heading to the reinforced steel door. For some reason, his good mood, induced by dinner with Hannah, had plummeted.

Striding across the main playing area of the third floor, he ignored all attempts from players and staff to meet his eyes.

With play in the tournament temporarily halted so the players who’d made it through to the second round could take a break, he found Hannah sipping coffee, surrounded by a horde of men all impressing their witticisms and manliness upon her.

When she saw him, her eyes lit up, then dimmed as she neared him.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Ooh, you liar. You look like someone’s stolen your granny’s false teeth and you’ve been told to donate your own as a replacement.’

Her good humour had zero effect on his blackening mood. ‘And you look like you’re having fun,’ he said pointedly, unable to contain the ice in his voice.

‘Isn’t that the whole point of me entering the tournament? Didn’t you tell me to enjoy myself?’

Francesco took a deep breath, Hannah’s bewilderment reminding him he had no good reason to be acting like a jealous fool.

Jealousy?

Was that really what the strong compulsion running through him to throw her over his shoulder and carry her out of the casino and away from all these admiring men was?

His father, for all his catting about with other women half his age, had been consumed with it. His mother had suffered more than one beating at his hands for daring to look at another man the wrong way.

Francesco had assumed that, in his own case, jealousy had skipped a generation. The closest he’d come to that particular emotion had been in his early twenties. Then, he’d learned Luisa, a girl he was seeing, was two-timing him with Pepe Mastrangelo, whom she’d sworn she’d finished with. That hadn’t been jealousy, though—that had been pure anger, a rage that had heightened when he learned she’d tricked him out of money so she could hightail it to the UK for an abortion. So duplicitous had she been, she’d no idea if he or Pepe was the father.

He’d despised Luisa for her lies, but not once had he wanted to seek Pepe out. Instead, Pepe had sought him out, his pain right there on the surface. But the only bruising Francesco had suffered had been to his ego, and the fight between them had been over before it started.

To learn he was as vulnerable to jealousy’s clutches as the next man brought him up short, reminding him that he had Calvetti blood running inside him.

Salvatore Calvetti would never have walked away from the Luisa and Pepe debacle as Francesco had done. If Salvatore had walked in his shoes, Luisa would have been scarred for life. Pepe would likely have disappeared, never to be seen again.

But he didn’t want to be anything like Salvatore.