Sicilian's Christmas Bride

The way he said it made her laugh. It was the first time she’d laughed in weeks.

Since Dante’s visit.

Since she’d discovered just how ruthless he could be.

Since she’d found out just how much she could hate him.

“The rent’s a perk of the job, can you imagine?”

She could. A picture was emerging of a bona fide eccentric with money to burn. The only thing that almost stopped her was that this meant returning to Dante’s city. And that was just plain ridiculous. It was her city, too, or had been for five years. Besides, the odds of running into one person in a city of eight million were zero to none.

And even if there was that eight-million-to-one chance, so what? She’d left Dante so he wouldn’t know she was having his baby, but it turned out she needn’t have worried. She’d told him Sam wasn’t his and he’d been only too willing to believe her.

Tally lifted her chin as she strode through the lobby of the glass tower and stepped into a waiting elevator. She should have spat in his face that night in her kitchen. Given the opportunity a second time, she wouldn’t pass it by.

“To hell with you, Dante Russo,” she said aloud, as the elevator whisked her to the twenty-seventh floor. “You’re a cold, contemptible son of a bitch and—”

The doors slid open.

And the cold, contemptible son of a bitch was standing in front of her, arms folded, face expressionless.

“Hello, Taylor,” he said, and that was when she knew she’d been had. All this—the wonderful job, the money, the apartment…

It was all a cruel joke.

A joke only one of them could laugh at, she thought, and then she stopped thinking, called him a word she had never before thought, much less used, and launched herself at the man she would hate for the rest of her life.

DANTE HAD KNOWN this wouldn’t be easy.

Taylor despised him. Well, so what? The feeling was mutual.

And she was proud.

He admired that in her; he always had. She’d never shown the weakness so many women—hell, so many men and women—showed, that of needing someone to lean on. Like him, she was independent and strong.

But things had changed.

She did need someone now. Some no-good SOB had gotten her pregnant and walked away, left her with a child to raise, and that made all the difference.

He’d decided to start by telling her that but she didn’t give him the chance. The elevator doors opened, she saw who was waiting for her and she came at him like a tiger.

He got his arms up just in time to keep her from clawing his face.

“Taylor,” he said, “Taylor, listen—”

“No,” she panted, raining blows on his upraised arms, “I’m done listening, you bastard! Wasn’t what you did to me enough? Did you need an encore? You no-good, heartless—”

He caught her hands, yanked them behind her back. “Stop it!”

“Let go. You let go of me or—”

She was still fighting him. Dante grunted, tucked his shoulder down and hoisted her over it like a bag of laundry. She shrieked, kicked her feet and yanked at his hair. What in hell would he say if somebody came running to see who was being murdered?

“Put me do

wn!”

“With pleasure,” he said grimly.