The Sicilian's Bought Cinderella

He’d been a fool. He’d been everything Aislin had accused him of being.

Just the thought of her name made his heart twist.

As the days had passed, the hole that had lived inside him since she’d slammed his car door had widened.

What had started as a small fissure had become a gulf in his chest.

He’d thought speaking to his mother and making peace with his father would heal him, but how could he be healed when every time he closed his eyes Aislin’s face appeared?

He had to see her.

Even if she slammed the door in his face, he could not leave things as they were. Their time together had been fleeting but had left its mark, had altered him in a fundamental way.

He could not live the rest of his life without seeing her face and hearing her Irish brogue.

Without getting to his knees and begging her forgiveness.

Without begging for another chance.

Without telling her that he loved her.

Because he did love her. Aislin brought sunshine wherever she went and the time they had spent together had infected him with its beaming radiance. She had switched a light on in him.

If he was condemned to spend the rest of his life without her sunshine, he wanted to be able to look at his reflection and say he had fought for her.

If she rejected him he would find a way to live with it. Whether she liked it or not, he was going to be part of her family now, because that was another gradual realisation his pig-headed brain had come to accept. He wanted to meet his sister and nephew. He wanted to be a part of their lives.

If Aislin loved them enough that she would lay her life down for them then that told him everything he needed to know about them.

A face appeared in the downstairs window.

Dante’s heart slammed.

A moment later the front door opened.

A slim, pretty brunette appeared. She didn’t move from the doorway, just stared at him.

On weighted legs, barely feeling the torrential rain falling on him, Dante made the short but excruciatingly long walk to his sister.

Staring into her green eyes was like looking in a mirror.

‘I knew you’d come,’ she said simply. Her voice was deeper than Aislin’s but with the same brogue.

‘How?’ He hadn’t known he was going to come until he’d woken that morning. It had been like waking from a long dream.

She smiled.

‘Because you’re my brother.’

And then she wrapped her arms around his rigid torso and held him so tightly that Dante found himself responding in kind, returning the embrace of this stranger who was not a stranger. His heart squeezed painfully, then expanded with a brand-new emotion filling it.

This was his sister. His sister. His blood.

They held each other for a long time before Orla kissed his cheek and led him into her home.

Finn, she told him as she made coffee in the tiniest kitchen Dante had ever been in, was sleeping. She would give him a little longer before waking him.

It was the opening he needed to ask, casually, where Aislin was.