Unwrapping The Castelli Secret

Even if she’d wanted to explain. Which she didn’t.

You can’t, she reminded herself sharply. That was the trouble with the Castelli family. Any exposure to them at all and she stopped doing what she knew she should do and started doing whatever it was they wanted, instead.

“Oddly,” Rafael replied, in that same dark tone, still studying her though he was clearly speaking to Luca, “she is claiming that she is a different person and that none of that happened to her.”

“She is also standing right here in front of you and can speak for herself,” Lily said tartly then. “I’m not claiming anything. Your confusion over my identity is very much your problem, not mine. You assaulted me on a dark street. I think I’m being remarkably indulgent, given the circumstances.”

“You assaulted her?” Luca’s dark brows edged up his forehead as he shifted his gaze to his brother. “That doesn’t sound much like you.”

“Of course not.” But Rafael still did not look away from Lily as he said that.

Inside, in the warmth and the light of the café, she could see the hints of gold in those dark eyes of his that had once fascinated her beyond measure. And she could feel his mouth against hers again, a wild bright thing in all that December dark. She told herself what moved in her then was a memory, that was all. Nothing more than a memory.

“I don’t think—” She almost said your brother but caught herself in the nick of time.

Would a stranger to these men know they were brothers at a glance? She thought the family resemblance was like a shout in a quiet room—unmistakable and obvious. Their imposing height, their strong shoulders, their rangy, rampantly masculine forms and all that absurd muscle that made them look carved to perfection. The thick black hair that, when left to its own devices, flirted with the tendency to curl.

Luca wore his in a haphazard manner he’d already raked back from his brow several times as they stood there. Rafael, by contrast, looked like some kind of lethal monk, with his hair so short and that grim look on his face. But they shared the same mouth, carnal and full, and she knew they even laughed in that same captivating, stunning way—using the whole of their bodies as if giving themselves over to pleasure was why they’d been placed on this earth.

Not that she could imagine this stark, furious, older version of Rafael laughing about anything—and she told herself she felt nothing at that thought. No pang. No sharp thing in the vicinity of her chest. Nothing at all.

She directed her attention toward Luca. “I don’t think your friend is well.”

“That’s a nice touch,” Rafael said flatly. “‘Friend.’ Very convincing. But I am not the one who is in some doubt as to his identity.”

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Lily continued, still looking at Luca, though it was almost as if he appeared in silhouette, with Rafael the dark and brooding sun that was the only thing she could see no matter where she looked. “I’m not sure, but he might need medical attention.”

Rafael said something in a sleek torrent of Italian that made Luca blink, then nod once, sharply. Clearly Rafael had issued an order. And it seemed that in this incarnation of the Castelli family, Rafael expected his orders to be followed and, more astonishing by far, they were. Because Luca turned away, toward a man and woman she’d completely failed to notice were sitting on the stools a few feet away watching this interaction with varying degrees of interest, and started talking to them in a manner clearly designed to turn their attention to him.

And off Lily and Rafael.

“I’m going to leave you in your friend’s hands now,” Lily told Rafael then, in a falsely bright sort of voice that she hoped carried over the shout of the espresso machine and some pop star’s whiny rendition of a Christmas carol on the sound system.

Rafael’s mouth moved again, another one of those too-hard quirks that felt wired directly to every last nerve in her body. It set them all alight and shivering. “Do you think so?”

“I have a life.” She shouldn’t have snapped that. It sounded defensive. A true stranger wouldn’t be defensive, would she? “I have—” She had to be careful. So very careful “—things to do that don’t include tending to strange men and their confusion over matters that have nothing to do with me.”

“Why did you come here?” he asked, much too quietly, when she could see temper and pain and something far darker in gaze.

Maybe that was why she didn’t throw herself out the door. That darkness that she could feel inside her, too. The guilt she couldn’t quite shake. But she did deliberately misunderstand him.

“This is my favorite coffee shop in Charlottesville. I was hoping a peppermint mocha might wash away all of that weirdness out in the street, and give you time to sober up.”

Amusement lit his dark gaze and it walloped her hard in the gut. So hard she saw stars for a moment.

“Am I drunk?”

“I don’t know what you are.” She tilted her head slightly. “I don’t know who you are.”

“So you have said.”

Lily waved a dismissive hand in the air. “I think this must be a rich-man thing. You think you see someone you know in the street, so you hunt them down and demand that they admit they’re that person, despite their insistence—and documented proof—that they’re someone else. I’d end up in jail if I tried that—or on a psychiatric ward. But I imagine that’s not a concern for someone as wealthy as you are.”

“Has my net worth penetrated the shroud of your broken memory?” His voice should have left marks, it was so scathing. “I find that is often the case. It’s amazing how many women I’ve never met can estimate my net worth to the penny.”

“You told me you were rich.” She used a tone she was quite certain no one had ever used on him before. One that suggested he was extraordinarily dim, though he looked more entertained by that than he did furious. “Not to mention, you’re not exactly dressed like a vagrant, are you?”

“When will this performance end?” he asked softly.

“Right now.” She straightened. “I’m going home. And I’m not asking you if that’s all right with you. I’m informing you. I suggest you get a good night’s sleep—maybe then you’ll stop seeing things.”

“What is amusing about that, Lily, is that tonight is the first time in five years that I haven’t seen a ghost when I thought I saw you.” He didn’t look as if he found that even remotely amusing. She knew she didn’t. “You are entirely real and standing right here in front of me, at long last.”

She forced a smile. “They say everyone has a twin.”

“If I were to open your coat and look beneath your shirt right now, what would I find?” he asked in the same softly menacing way.

“An assault charge,” she retorted, her tone brisk. “And a potential jail sentence, God willing.”

His mouth shifted into something not quite a smile. “A scarlet lily nestled in a climbing black vine, crawling over your right hip and stretching up your side, perhaps?”

His dark gaze was so intent, so absolutely certain, that it took her breath away. And it was far harder than it should have been to simply stand there. To do nothing. To keep herself from touching her side in wordless acknowledgment, jerking back as if he’d caught her or any of a hundred other little tells that would show him her guilt.

Not that he appeared to be in any doubt about her guilt. Or her identity.

“There are a number of good psychiatrists in the Charlottesville area,” she told him when she was certain she could speak without any of that turmoil in her voice. Only the politeness she’d offer any random person she encountered, with a little compassion for someone so obviously nutty. “I’m sure one of them would see you for an emergency session. Your net worth will undoubtedly help with that.”

He really smiled then, though it was nothing like the Rafael smiles of old, so bright and carefree he could have lit up the whole of Europe if he’d wanted. This one was hard. Focused. Determined—and still it echoed deep inside her like a touch.

She was so busy telling herself that he didn’t affect her and he didn’t get to her at all that she didn’t move out of the way fast enough. She didn’t even see the danger until it was too late. His hand was on her too quickly, his fingers brushing over her temple, and Lily didn’t know how to react as sensation seared through her.

Would a stranger leap away? Or stand there, frozen in shock and disbelief?

“Get your hand off me right now,” she gritted out, going with the frozen option—because that was what she was. Head to toe. She didn’t think she could move if she’d wanted to, she was so rooted to the ground in what she told herself was outrage. She could feel his touch everywhere. Everywhere. Hot and right and perfect. As if all these years later, the merest brush of his fingers was all he had to do to prove that she’d been stumbling around in the cold black-and-white dark without him.

This was heat. This was color and light and—

This is dangerous! everything inside her shrieked in belated alarm.

“You got this scar skiing in Tahoe one winter,” he murmured, his voice pitched low, as if those were words of love or sex instead of accusation as he traced the tiny mark she’d long since forgotten was there. Up, then down. The effect was narcotic. “You hit a patch of ice and then, shortly after that, a tree. You were lucky you didn’t break anything except one ski. You had to walk down the side of the mountain, and you terrified the entire family when you appeared in the chalet, bleeding.”

He moved closer, those dark eyes of his intense and moody, focused on that little scar she didn’t even see anymore when she looked at herself. And surely the stranger she was pretending to be would have been paralyzed just as she was, then—suspended between the need to run screaming into the street and the desire to stay right where she was. Surely anyone would do the same.

Anyone for whom this man has always been a terrible addiction, a harsh voice inside told her.

But she still didn’t move.

“And I had to make the sarcastic remarks of the bored older brother I never was to you,” Rafael said gruffly. “Playing it off for our parents. Until later.”