Back Cover Text
Whisked Away by Her Sicilian Boss
Rebecca Winters
The duke she’s never forgotten...
When Gemma Rizzo applied to become pastry chef at the gorgeous Italian castello where she grew up, she never expected to get the job. But neither did she expect to find that her new boss was silver-eyed billionaire Vincenzo Gagliardi—the man who left her brokenhearted!
Her first instinct is to run, but when Vincenzo finally reveals the devastating truth of what caused him to flee eleven years before, Gemma must decide if she can trust the haunted man she never stopped loving...
To my darling daughter Dominique, a wonderful
romance writer who has an editor’s instinct and insight
to keep her mother’s writing on track and believable.
She too is a Dumas lover.
We’re both Francophiles at heart.
Castello di Lombardi, ten years ago
AT TWO IN the morning, Vincenzo Gagliardi, newly turned eighteen, quickly dressed in jeans and a hoodie he pulled over his black hair. The long sleeves covered the bruises on his arms. He could feel the welts still smarting on his back and legs as he slid his pack over his shoulders. Then he looked around his room one more time, glancing at the bed.
A vision of Gemma, the woman who’d been entwined in his arms there the night before, wouldn’t leave his mind. After the pleasure they’d given each other despite his wounds, and the plans he’d envisioned for their future, it killed him to think he had to leave her at all. But the difficulties with his father made his flight necessary. Worse, he couldn’t tell her where he was going or why. It was for her own protection.
Once his father, the acting Duca di Lombardi, started looking for him, he’d interrogate everyone, including Gemma, and he would be able to tell if she was lying or not. If the girl he’d grown up with from earliest childhood knew nothing about his disappearance, then his father would sense it and have to believe her.
Arrivederci, Gemma, his heart moaned. Ti amo.
Making sure no one saw him, he hurried through the fourteenth-century castello to Dimi’s room in the other tower. His cousin had left his bedroom door open. Closer than brothers, they’d been planning Vincenzo’s disappearance for a year.
Dimi was waiting for him. “You’re late and must go now! I’ve been watching from the parapet. The guard with the dog won’t be walking past the entrance for another seven minutes.”
“This is it, cousin. Remember—when I’m established in New York, I’ll contact you. Look for the phone number through an ad in the help wanted of Il Giorno’s classified section. Be sure to call me on a throwaway phone.”
Dimi nodded.
“It won’t be long before you turn eighteen.
