Wedding Vow of Revenge

“I’m pregnant? You’re sure?” she asked the doctor, butterflies taking off in her stomach like Kamikaze pilots on a rampage.

“Sì, signora. It is good we can tell these things so early now, yes?”

“Yes.”

She stumbled out of the doctor’s office, her mind in a whirl. She was pregnant. With Angelo’s baby. Her hand dropped to her tummy. She didn’t feel any different, but she carried life inside of her, the product of her marriage to a very special man.

Angelo was going to be thrilled.

In fact, he was ecstatic. “You are pregnant with my baby? Already?”

She grinned at his jubilant response. “Yes.”

“I guess I am very potent for you.” His Sicilian accent suddenly evident.

She pressed herself against him, feeling evidence of that potency intimately. “Yes, dearest Angelo, I think you are.”

He growled and started kissing her.

They flew to New York two weeks later. Angelo insisted she take settling into her new home slowly, sleep late and arrive at the office no earlier than 10:00 a.m. because of her pregnancy. When she argued she was pregnant, not an invalid, he told her he wanted to pamper her.

How could she refuse him?

She was eating her breakfast on their balcony that overlooked Manhattan when the doorbell rang. She got up to answer it, but Maria, the housekeeper got to it before she did.

She halted in the living room when she heard a familiar voice that made her muscles tense. What in the world was Baron doing here?

He walked into the room, his eyes fixed on her in some kind of ludicrous appeal. “Tara.”

“You have no business in my home, Baron. You know I don’t want to see you.”

“I came to save you from a monster much worse than the one you believed me to be.” He stood there, looking as handsome as he ever had, but she wasn’t moved in the slightest.

She just wanted him gone.

She rolled her eyes at his dramatics. “Godzilla?”

His jaw tautened. “Angelo Gordon.”

“My husband is not a monster. Get out of our home. Right now.” She called Maria’s name. “This man is about to leave. Please see him out.”

“Tara, you’ve got to listen to me. It’s for your own good.”

She totally ignored him and went back to her breakfast, shutting the terrace door on his voice.

She didn’t tell Angelo about the other man’s visit when she got to work because she figured later that night, when they were home, would be soon enough.

Looking scrumptious in a dark suit and pristine-white shirt, Angelo came into her office and asked if she wanted to join him for lunch.

She smiled up at him, wondering how much of what she felt for him glowed in her eyes. “I’d love to.”

“Great.”

They went to one of her favorite seafood restaurants and she was feeding a seemingly insatiable craving for rock shrimp in cocktail sauce when a shadow fell over their table.

“Tara.”

She looked up and barely stifled a groan of irritation. “What are you doing here?”

“You need to know the truth about your husband.”

“Go away, Baron.”

Angelo stood, towering over the older man menacingly. “Leave my wife alone, Randall.”

Baron backed up a step, but he didn’t leave. “Or you’ll do what? Ruin me?” He laughed, the sound hollow. “I’m already ruined and don’t think for a second I don’t know who is responsible.”

“You are responsible. Everything happening to you right now, you brought on yourself.”

What was he talking about? Baron was ruined? And he held Angelo responsible? “What’s going on?” she demanded.

“Does she know why you sought her out?” Baron asked, nodding toward Tara.

“Our relationship is none of your business,” Angelo bit out, sounding so feral, she shivered.

“Neat evasion tactic.” Baron sneered. “But since we both know you detest deceit of any kind, it isn’t going to work. Tell her the truth.”

“What truth?” But a sick suspicion was growing like a mushroom cloud after a nuclear explosion inside her. “Baron’s the man who seduced your mother, isn’t he?”

Angelo looked down at her. “Yes. I have more reason to hate the bastard than you do.”

Remembering all that he had told her, she could do nothing but agree. “Yes.”

But that told her nothing about how she fit into all of it and she was horrifyingly sure she fit somewhere.

Her agreement seemed to take Baron back for a moment, but then his expression turned ugly. “Maybe. But that means she’s going to despise you just as much for using her the same way.”