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The next man to feed you chocolate will be the love of your life.
I felt the sneer carving on my face and wondered, briefly, when was the last time I smiled. It was about something silly Francesca had briefly told me on the landing at her house before I bent her father’s arm into giving her to me.
“Sterling!” I barked from my spot by my bride’s bed.
The old maid rushed into the room, the frantic wandering of her erratic pupils telling me she expected the worst.
“Send Francesca the biggest Godiva chocolate basket available with a note from me. Leave it blank.”
“That’s a wonderful idea,” she squealed, slapping her knees. “She hasn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours, so I will do that right away.”
She dashed downstairs to the kitchen where she kept a Yellow Pages bigger than her frame.
I pushed the note back into place, rearranging the pillows in the same, messy heap I’d found them.
I cared more about fucking with Francesca Rossi’s head than I did her body.
Now that was my idea of foreplay.
Chapter
Four
FRANCESCA
Two days of nothingness ticked by, soaking like blood on the walls of my room.
I refused to communicate with anyone.
Even the in-desperate-need-for-love garden was left unattended, including the plants and vegetables I’d potted after Mama paid me a visit the day after Wolfe took me.
She snuck seeds of begonias in the wooden box. “The most resilient flowers, Francesca. Just like you.”
Then Ms. Sterling caught up with my hobby and brought me some radishes, carrot, and cherry tomato seeds, trying to lift my mood and perhaps encourage me to expend some energy and consume something more than tap water.
Sleep was short, tormented, and interrupted with a nightmare: a monster prowling in the shadows behind my bedroom door, baring his teeth in a wolfish grin every time I looked its way.
The monster’s eyes were mesmerizing, but his smile was frightening. And when I tried to wake up, to unchain myself from the dream, my body was paralyzed to the mattress.
There were two things I wanted desperately—for Wolfe to understand we couldn’t get married and for Angelo to realize that the kiss was a misunderstanding.
Ms. Sterling brought food, water, and coffee to my bed every few hours, leaving silver trays filled with goodness on my nightstand. I drank the water to keep myself from fainting, but the rest remained untouched.
I especially ignored the huge basket of chocolate my future husband had sent to me. It sat in the corner of the room on the fancy desk, collecting dust.
Even though the low sugar in my blood made white dots explode in my vision every time I made a sudden move, I still somehow knew that the expensive chocolate would taste of my own surrender.
A flavor so bitter, no sugar could sweeten it.
Then there were the notes.
The cursed, exasperating notes.
I’d opened two out of the three, and both pointed at Wolfe as the love of my life.
I tried to tell myself that it was clearly coincidental.
Keaton might have had a change of heart. Perhaps he decided to worm his way into my good graces with gifts.
