Raffaele: Taming His Tempestuous Virgin

This woman was none of those things.

She sat wrapped in a black coat even though the cabin was a steady 72 degrees Fahrenheit. She sat very still, her shoulders back, spine rigid. Last he’d looked, her hands were knotted in her lap.

She was an ill-dressed, tight-lipped stranger.

And she happened to be his wife.

Rafe felt the muscle in his cheek jump again.

His wife.

The words, the very concept, were impossible to grasp. He, the man who had no interest in marrying, had married Chiara Cordiano. He’d married a woman he didn’t know, didn’t like, didn’t want, any more than she wanted him.

Rafe shut his eyes, bit back a groan of despair.

How in hell had he let himself get roped into this? Nobody had ever accused him of fancying himself a knight in shining armor. Well, no—but he couldn’t have just stood by and let her be handed over to Pig Man.

Assuming, of course, that would really have happened.

Rafe frowned. But would it?

Her father had wanted his daughter to marry an Orsini. The don had no way of knowing he was not part of Cesare’s organization; Cesare would never have admitted such a thing to an enemy.

Cordiano surely would have figured the marriage would strengthen ties between the old world and the new at the same time it settled a debt.

Marrying Chiara to the capo, on the other hand, would have accomplished very little, only ensuring a loyalty that already existed. Why waste her on an underling?

Rafe cursed under his breath.

He’d been scammed.

His father had wanted him to marry his old enemy’s daughter. Freddo Cordiano had wanted the same thing. But he’d said he wouldn’t, and Cordiano had staged a scene straight from a fairy tale. Either the prince married the princess, or the ogre got her.

The only question was, had Chiara known about it?

Rafe folded his arms.

Dutiful Sicilian daughter that she was, what if she’d agreed to do her best to make him think everything that had happened today was real, starting with that ridiculous stuff on the road? A pair of burlesque bandits, stopping his car…Yes. That would have been good staging. Both father and daughter would have known it wouldn’t send him running, that if anything, he’d have been even more determined to reach San Giuseppe.

Even that kiss in the car. Her initial struggle against him, followed by that one sweet sigh of surrender, the softening of her lips, the rich, hot taste of her…

He’d been had.

Aside from him, the only other person who hadn’t been in on the con was Giglio. Chiara and her old man had used the capo as neatly as they’d used him.

Rafe narrowed his eyes.

Final proof? The 1–2-3 wedding ceremony. Cordiano had obviously pulled a bunch of highpowered strings. There’d been no posting of wedding banns, no formalities beyond signing a couple of papers in front of a mayor who’d all but knelt at the don’s feet. A handful of mumbled words and, wham, it was done.

Cordiano had beamed. “You may kiss the bride,” he’d said.

Except, of course, Rafe hadn’t.

Chiara had looked up at him. He’d looked down at her. Her eyes had held no expression; her lips had been turned in. “Do not touch me” had been her message, and he’d come within a heartbeat of saying, “Trust me, baby, you don’t have a thing to worry about.”

That kiss in the car, that one moment of heat…Easy to explain. The encounter on the road had left him pumping adrenaline. Danger, sex…One complemented the other. A man could fool himself into thinking anything when he was in that kind of state.

Rafe sat up straight.

Okay. He understood it all. Not that it mattered. He’d married the woman. Now he had to unmarry her. Next stop, an annulment. Divorce. Whatever it took.

Problem solved.

Not that he would just abandon his blushing bride. Yes, she’d trapped him, but he wasn’t blameless. He, the man who prided himself on logical thinking, had not thought logically. The price for digging yourself out of a hole, even when someone else had handed you the shovel, was never cheap.

He would do the honorable thing. Arrange a financial settlement. Considering all the effort Chiara had gone to, hauling him in, she was entitled to it. Then she could return to Sicily and he could forget all about—

“Signor Orsini.”

He looked up. Chiara stood next to him. He tried not to shake his head at the sight. When they were kids, his sister Anna had gone through a Goth period that had, thankfully, lasted only about a minute. She’d dressed in black from head to toe. She’d even dyed her long, blond hair black.

“You look like something the cat dragged in,” he’d told her, with all the aplomb of an older brother.

But a cat would not have bothered dragging Chiara in. Or out. She looked too pathetic. Well, except for the hair. Even skinned back in that damned bun again, it had the gloss of a raven’s wing.