Secrets Made in Paradise

“I guess it is, isn’t it?” Freja finished tagging Nels and hit Post.

Nels was a recent graduate of business law who was drowning in debt and firmly in the closet for family reasons. In exchange for stepping into Giovanni’s nonexistent shoes, Freja had promised to assure Nels’s terminally ill grandmother that she loved him passionately and eternally.

It was a match made in screamingly civilized practicality.

“Tell him not to peek,” Teresina suggested as she straightened and gently tested the hidden banding that secured the off-the-shoulder sleeves. The bodice was made of Venetian lace exquisitely crafted to plunge in both front and back, painting Freja’s torso in white flames that danced down both arms to her wrists. “I can’t imagine any man seeing you like this could resist you, though.”

Freja smiled weakly, not revealing that the one man she had hoped to get a rise from had very firmly resisted.

She completely ignored the agonized whisper in the back of her head that asked, What if he’s really dead?

He wasn’t. Snakes of anxiety slithered in her middle over his continued absence, but she had plenty of reasons to believe he was still alive. Okay, more like a handful of subtle coincidences and one decent piece of evidence that wasn’t solid enough to prove anything, not even a robbery. When she had tried to tell Nels she thought there was a chance her husband could be alive, however, he’d given her a look of pity and suggested she was stuck in the denial stage of grief.

Maybe she was. She had fought seeing Giovanni’s true feelings toward her, right up until that final conversation.

Do you love me? Do you even want to be married?

You’re behaving like a jealous shrew. Wait for me in my hotel room. I’ll join you when I’ve finished my meeting.

He hadn’t. And dead or not, Giovanni had left his fortune in her hands. She was wholly unequipped to manage it. Nels had lived on her floor when she’d been at university and had been kind enough to look over her book contract and, later, her prenuptial agreement. When she’d gone to him with the volumes of legal documents that were coming her way as a result of her husband’s supposed demise, he’d been alarmed by the overreach some of Giovanni’s top executives were attempting.

Freja was a millennial with pale blond hair, blue eyes, and no formal schooling until her degree in creative writing. Obviously, that meant she was a certified bubblehead who couldn’t so much as recognize when a fast food outlet was trying to upsell her a supersize of fries. Her knowledge on running a multinational corporation was zero, but she was smart enough to see phrases like “irrevocable power of attorney” as the horrendous red flags that they were.

Another woman would have snatched up the reins and stared down the sexist pigs trying to take advantage of her. Freja might have, if she hadn’t been brittle with grief. Meanwhile, every meeting had been full of vultures making advances, baldly trying to flatter her into a relationship as a shortcut to Giovanni’s money. It was exhausting. She didn’t have the stomach for it, especially not for a fortune she neither wanted nor needed.

Nels had trusted her with his secret back when she’d shyly asked him on a date because he felt so unthreatening. He had minored in corporate ethics and longed to effect change at the highest levels. Remarrying would offer her protection from the vultures, so their grand bargain had been struck.

Was it bigamy if her first husband was secretly still alive and the second marriage was only on paper? She had asked Nels, but he had given her that pitying look again and said, “I need to know you’re of sound mind or we can’t do this.”

Giovanni was the only person who could prove it was illegal. If he wanted to burst in at the last second to stop it, fine. But she wouldn’t hold her breath. She really would be the clichéd dumb blonde if she failed to get the message that her husband didn’t want to be tied to her after he had staged an explosion to end things.

No, she accepted that their whirlwind romance had fizzled as quickly as it had flared. If that left her feeling as bleak and wraithlike as a wisp of smoke, well, she only had herself to blame. She had known there was no such thing as forever, but she’d gone ahead and fallen for him anyway. Her heart had been broken into a thousand pieces for her trouble.

“Bellissima.” Teresina finished her fussing and kissed the tips of her fingers. “Shall we try it with the veil?”

The muted ping of the bell at the front silenced the squirrel-like chatter out there. It happened so abruptly, Teresina and Freja both looked toward the closed curtain. Freja’s stomach clenched with apprehension.

A male voice asked to see the manager.

The hair on the back of Freja’s neck stood up. She didn’t know that voice precisely, but she’d been on high alert since Giovanni’s “death.” The explosion had been reported as an accident, but she was convinced it had been a deliberate attempt to kill him. She understood that meant she could be a target, too.

Maybe she was paranoid. Maybe it was just a salesman. She had no reason to believe that authoritative voice was here for her. Any man who wanted to meet with her could make an appointment through her agent or Nels or any number of other channels. They wouldn’t hunt her down in a wedding boutique.

But as the clerk said, “I’ll see if she’s available,” and the silence remained absolute, a cold layer of perspiration burst onto Freja’s skin.

Teresina smiled an apology and started for the curtain.

Freja forced an unbothered smile as adrenaline poured into her extremities, clenching her lungs and tightening her hand on her phone.

As Teresina slipped past the curtain, Freja moved without second-guessing her instinct. She scooped up her miles of skirt and ran silently on the toes of her five-inch heels past the door into the changing room, where she’d left her clothes and purse, past the powder room, into the administration office, where she’d first met with Teresina and seen the—

Porta di emergenza allarmata.

That’s what this was. An emergency. She was alarmed.

She shoved against the lever and burst into the narrow cobblestone alley. A loud bell began to ring within the shop. The door clattered closed behind her, muffling the sound. It grew fainter as she raced toward the street, where traffic honked in its usual chaotic madness.

She was only thinking she needed witnesses. Getting arrested for stealing a dress she’d only half paid for was better than facing whatever that man had in store for her. She could call Nels from the police sta—

Behind her, she heard the door slam open again. Shouts sounded.

In front of her, a black SUV swerved into the sidewalk, forcing her to pull up short at the mouth of the alley. She started to pivot in hopes of squeezing past it and down the street, but the back door flung open.

“Get in,” Giovanni said.

The sight of him struck like a gong, leaving her quivering. He had a shaggy black beard and dark glasses, and his black hoodie was pulled up to hide all but his familiar cheekbones, but his legs stopped above the knees and she recognized the tense line of his mouth.

Alive. Her heart soared so high, it should have shattered the sky.

At the same time, a thousand furies invaded her like a swarm of killer bees. There was no triumph in learning she was right. There was only a crippling heartbreak that he had abandoned her. If he’d been truly dead, she would have been angry, but she wouldn’t have blamed him.

This, though? He had put her through horrifying hours of actually believing he was gone. She had endured his gut-wrenching funeral, convinced it was a sham. Then, two short weeks later, she’d suffered another unbearable loss that would never heal.

He’d forced her to go through all of that alone.

For every minute that had passed since that awful day, she had longed for him to reveal h

imself, but now her feet only carried her forward so she could bitterly hiss, “Go to hell.”

“Where do you think I’ve been?” he growled.

“I’m calling the police!” Teresina yelled from deep in the alley. Two of Teresina’s employees were recording everything on their phones.

A man in a suit was running toward her. She instinctively moved closer to Giovanni, heart jamming with fear.

Giovanni’s hard arm looped around her and he dragged her into the back of the car. He clutched the door frame for leverage, but his strength was as annoyingly effortless as always.

She didn’t fight him. In fact, once he grabbed her out of her stasis, she helped, kicking against the edge of the door to thrust herself inside, desperate for whatever sanctuary he offered.

They wound up in a heap on the back seat while the man who was chasing her came up to the open door and reached for her leg.

She screamed and kicked at him with her sharp heels. He dodged her shoes and threw the yards of silk in after her, then slammed the door before he leaped into the passenger seat in front of Giovanni.

“Go,” Giovanni said to the driver, and he pushed himself upright.

As the SUV sped into traffic, Freja rocked deeper into the seat, stunned to her toes.