CHAPTER 1
Annette Hudson rushed around her tiny studio apartment, grabbing last-minute items. She was late leaving for the airport, but she'd had a last-minute emergency at work.
Nothing new in that. Understaffed and underfunded, her nonprofit organization expected her to wear multiple hats on a daily basis. Getting the week off for her little sister's wedding had been nearly impossible, but for once Annette had refused to back down about taking the time.
Joyce was getting married and Annette wasn't going to miss it. Not only was Joyce the only family who still had anything to do with her, but Annette was one of Joyce's bridesmaids. She had the dress to prove it.
That she would see the man she'd jilted at the altar five years before had nothing to do with the discordant concerto playing along her nerve endings. No, of course it didn't. He was just at the center of the biggest mistake of her life, costing her the family she'd dreamed of and the family she'd grown up with, not to mention the man she'd loved beyond reason.
Although the society pages showed him escorting a bevy of beautiful women to his mother's charity galas, Carlo Messina was still single. He would play best man for the groom. In a cruel twist of fate, Annette's baby sister had fallen for, and was marrying, Carlo's younger brother, Fantino Messina.
The similarities between the two couples were uncanny. Joyce was the same young twenty-two Annette had been when she'd left Carlo standing at the altar. Fantino was eerily the same age Carlo had been then as well, twenty-nine.
But there was no chance Joyce would take flight as Annette had done. Not only was she a far more self-assured twenty-two, confident in the love of her Sicilian tycoon, Joyce was also seven months pregnant. The plans had already been in place for thewedding of the centurywhen Annette's younger sister told their families the happy news.
Their mother had been livid, but everyone else, even Carlo's conservative Sicilian relatives, had been delighted.
Annette was thrilled for her sister, if a little envious.
Joyce was building the very life that Annette had always dreamed of, and it was no one's fault but her own that she hadn't realized it first. Determined to show nothing but happiness for her sister, Annette rushed for the MAX line that would take her to the airport.
Several hours and a plane ride later, Annette dragged her suitcase out of the back of the taxi in front of an exclusive building in Manhattan. She might be willing to travel public transport in Portland, Oregon, but wasn't as confident of doing so alone in New York City.
You could take the girl away from wealth and privilege, but you couldn't stop the tapes playing in her head of all she'd been taught by parents who had a distinctus and themmentality when it came to the moneyhavesandhave nots. She didn't want to be afraid to ride the subway alone, but she was.
Would she ever be wholly her own person, leaving her parents' narrow view of the world behind completely?
She walked into the lobby of the apartment building and gave the doorman her name. Fantino had an apartment here and Annette was staying there for the week before the wedding. She could have stayed with her parents, but that would have been awkward when they hadn't had a real conversation in five years.
Not since her father had all but forced her to leave New York, by offering a substantial gift to her organization, if they transferred her to their office across country. She'd spent the last five years in exile, very pointedly not invited to family gatherings. Returning for a visit had been out of the question. Labeled an ungrateful daughter who had humiliated her family by standing her billionaire groom up at the altar, Annette had been shunned by everyone except Joyce since that fateful day.
Okay, so there could be a lot of reasons for the butterflies tap dancing in spiked cleats in her stomach right now, and Carlo Messina was only one of them.
The doorman requested her identification and then sent her up in the elevator to Fantino's penthouse floor. The man himself was there to greet her when she knocked on his door.
Looking so much like his older brother, it hurt her to see him, his teeth flashed white in a warm smile. "Annette! Welcome! Joyce will be so glad you have made it."
It was all Annette could do to summon a smile of acknowledgement to Fantino's words. She should have it together. She'd been wholly on her own since leaving New York. Annette had stood up to drug dealers who were messing with the kids in her program. She'd stared down cops doing the same thing.
The prospect of seeing Carlo Messina again shouldn't be so darn scary, much less her own parents.
Only it was.
She was shaking inside but hiding it, and that was the best she could hope for.
"Who is it?" Think of the devil and he will appear. Six feet, four inches of Sicilian male perfection, Carlo stood there looking amazing in a bespoke suit, his dark hair styled perfectly.
No pallor beneath his sun kissed skin to reveal nerves to rival hers. But then, he'd never actually loved her, and she'd never gotten over loving him. He hadn't had neatly trimmed facial hair six years ago. It gave him a sexy edge he didn't need. The man was already sex on a stick with a side of dark chocolate sauce.
The look in his grey eyes when they landed on her was indifferent. So much worse than anger. It indicated that while she hadn't been able to move on, he had.
"Oh, I see," he said dismissively. "Joyce is in the living room," Carlo turned to walk away.
Say something, she instructed herself, but Annette couldn't get a single word past the obstruction in her throat.
"Don't mind him. He's had enough girlfriends since you broke up, he can't claim he's been pining for you," Fantino said airily, leading her into the swank, modern living room of the penthouse.
If that was supposed to make her feel better, it had failed spectacularly.