The Sicilian's Scandalous Secret

‘You married me believing that I didn’t love you. That must have been incredibly hard.’ He eased her away from him and she blushed.

‘OK. Maybe it was a little. Do you know what’s weird? I’ve always wanted to be a Ferrara. All my life, I wished I was in your family.’

‘And now you are.’ His hands cupped her face and his eyes gleamed with purpose. ‘And once you’re in the family, you’re in it for ever.’

Smiling, she wrapped her arms around his neck. ‘Once a Ferrara wife…’

‘…always a Ferrara wife,’ and he lowered his head to kiss her.

* * * * *

This book includes an extended sneak peek of The Sicilian’s Bought Cinderella by Michelle Smart that we think you’ll love!

This longer excerpt does mean that the story of The Sicilian’s Scandalous Secret will end at approximately 80% on your digital reader or app.

Enjoy the story—and the extended excerpt!

Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of Michelle Smart’s next book,

THE SICILIAN’S BOUGHT CINDERELLA

Posing as Dante’s fiancée at a society wedding is a far cry from Aislin’s modest life, but she’ll do anything to secure money for her sick nephew. Yet soon their explosive passion rips through the terms of their arrangement, leaving them both hungry for more…

Read on for a glimpse of

THE SICILIAN’S BOUGHT CINDERELLA

CHAPTER ONE

DANTE MONCADA JUMPED INTO THE CAR BESIDE HIS DRIVER, TWO OF HIS MEN CLAMBERING IN BEHIND HIM. THIS WAS ALL HE NEEDED, SOMEONE BREAKING INTO THE OLD COTTAGE THAT HAD BEEN IN THE MONCADA FAMILY’S POSSESSION FOR GENERATIONS.

AS HIS DRIVER navigated Palermo’s narrow streets and headed into the rolling countryside, Dante thought back to his earlier conversation with Riccardo D’Amore. The head of the D’Amore family had put the brakes on a deal Dante had been negotiating for the past six months. Riccardo ran a clean, wholesome business and was concerned Dante’s reputation would tarnish it.

He muttered a curse under his breath and resisted the urge to punch the dashboard.

What reputation? So he liked the ladies. That was no crime. His business empire was built on legitimate money. He did not play the games many Sicilian men liked to play. He kept his nose clean literally and figuratively. He liked to drink and party, but so what? He didn’t touch drugs, never gambled and avoided the circles where arms, drug dealing and people trafficking were considered profitable business enterprises. He worked hard. Building a multi-billion-euro technology empire from a modest million-euro inheritance, and with an accountancy trail even the most hardened auditor would fail to find fault with, took dedication. For sure, he cut the odd corner here and there, and his Sicilian heritage meant he did not suffer fools, but every cent he’d earned he’d earned legitimately.

But the legitimacy of his business was not the factor behind Riccardo’s foot coming down on the deal that Dante and Alessio, Riccardo’s eldest son, had spent months working on. The D’Amores had developed the next-generation safety system for smart phones that had proven itself hack-proof, out-performing all rivals. Alessio and Dante were all set to sign an exclusivity agreement for Dante to install the system in the smart phones and tablets his company was Europe’s leader in. This system would give him the tools to penetrate America, the only continent Dante was still to get a decent foothold in.

Riccardo’s talk about reputations boiled down to one thing. Dante’s parentage. His recently deceased father Salvatore had been a heavy gambler and the ultimate playboy. His mother Immacolata was known unaffectionately as the Black Widow, a moniker Dante had always thought unfair, as she had never actually killed any of her husbands, merely leeched them for money when she divorced them. His father had been her first husband. She was currently on number five. His mother lived like a queen.

Riccardo, on the other hand, had had one wife, eleven children, thought gambling the work of the devil and sex outside the confines of marriage a sin. Riccardo was concerned Dante was the apple that hadn’t fallen far from the tree. Riccardo wanted proof that Dante was not the mere sum of his parents’ parts and would

not bring Amore Systems and by extension Riccardo himself into disrepute. Riccardo was now in advanced talks with Dante’s biggest rival about contracting the system to them instead.

Damn him. The old fool was supposed to have retired.

He had one chance to prove his respectability before the deal was lost for good, Alessio’s forthcoming wedding.

Dante’s angry ruminations on his business problems were put to one side when his driver pulled the car to a stop in a small opening amidst the dense woodland that ran along the driveway to the cottage. A few metres away, also cunningly hidden in the woodland, was a much smaller city car…

Dante reached into the footwell for the baseball bat he hoped he wouldn’t have to use.

Flanked by his bodyguards, he neared the run-down farmer’s cottage through the thick trees that hid their approach from watching eyes and rubbed his arms against the bracing chill under the cloudless night sky. The remnants of what had been an unusually cold winter still lingered in the air.

The small cottage with its peeling whitewashed exterior walls came into view. All the shutters were closed but smoke curled out of the chimney that hadn’t been used in two decades, wisping upwards into the still darkness of this early spring Sicilian evening. Marcello, who managed the land, had been correct that someone was there.

Keeping to the shadows, Dante and his men approached it.