took her hand from his chest, bent his head to reject her.
The light flickered again, and it was no longer his beautiful face but the face of a stranger. Scarred. Burned. Changed.
Not Domenico at all.
Diane’s weak leg gave out and she collapsed, tumbling at his feet.
CHAPTER TWO
DOMENICO caught the fragile shepherdess just before her head slammed against the stone. Her heavy staff clattered to the ground instead, joining her broken mask.
She was small, light—lighter than Diane. Because this wasn’t his Diane. No matter what this woman said. No matter the game she played.
But he couldn’t leave her here. The night was cold and her cloak was nearly as thin as her sheer costume. Effortlessly he swung her up, lifting her high against his chest. It angered him that she felt more like an angel than a woman. So frail. Too frail.
His robe swirled around his legs as he carried her back to the palazzo, and he tried to concentrate on the cold and the fog instead of the woman in his arms.
When she’d touched him he’d burned. That brush of her fingers across his chest had hurt. Not tingled. Burned.
Just like the fire that had consumed the car the night of the accident.
His gaze dropped to the top of her head with its elaborate white wig. How strange that he felt nothing when Valeria touched him, and yet he felt everything when this little impostor touched him.
Jaw hardening, he resolved to get to the bottom of this charade—but it would be in private, away from the guests and the revelry.
A wide-eyed Pietra held the door open for him and, entering the palazzo, he walked past the grand staircase to the back of the house, where another staircase ran upstairs to the family’s personal rooms.
He climbed the stairs in twos to his private suite on the third floor and placed the now silent shepherdess on the sitting room’s antique sofa.
“Well?” he said brusquely, stepping back to have a hard look at her. She was beautiful. Ethereal. Impossibly fragile. “What is this about? Has someone put you up to this? Are you in need of money?”
The shepherdess tilted her head back, white ringlets cascading over her slender shoulders as she stared up at him, her eyes a stunning blue-green, overly brilliant in her pale face. “No.” Her voice shook and he wanted to shake her.
Those eyes … that voice … so like Diane it almost fooled him. Almost, but not quite. Yet the damage was done. He was thinking of her again. Feeling what he’d once felt. Love. Loss. Grief.
Rage.
And the rage hit him anew, fresh fury washing over him, through him, stealing his calm, darkening his mind. He already blamed himself for Diane’s death—he had been at the wheel, after all—but how dared this woman? How dared she mock him? How dared she impersonate his beloved wife?
Domenico stepped closer and lowered himself to his haunches, crouching before her so their eyes were level. “I warn you,” he said softly, dangerously. “I am not a patient man. I will not tolerate this. Tell me why you’re here and what you want or—” He broke off, his hands squeezing, knotting, kneading. He’d break her. Destroy her. Because, God help him, what kind of woman would do this?
He’d never loved anyone as he’d loved Diane. Diane had been his heart. His life. He’d defied everyone to marry her. He’d lost everything to have her. And he hadn’t cared. He’d loved her so completely. With every inch of his heart.
She’d never believed him. Never trusted him. Unable to accept that he’d rather lose his inheritance, his family, than lose her. It hadn’t been just rash promises, either. He’d given it all up on the day he’d married her. His mother, enraged that he’d marry a commoner, and an American at that, had stripped it all from him, though she could never take his title. It was his father who had allowed them to stay at Ca’ Coducci for their honeymoon, but that had been their one and only visit here together.
He hadn’t cared, though. He’d had his own business in Rome, and an apartment, and a beautiful wife he’d adored.
It was all he’d needed. Work, love, life.
But then Diane had died, and miraculously he’d been returned to the family bosom. Restored just like the prodigal son.
Only he hadn’t wanted to be returned to the family bosom. He’d wanted Diane.
And this woman, this shepherdess, presumed to be his love, his life.
God help her, she was in trouble now.
“Or what? What would you do?” she flashed, eyes blazing back at him, expression defiant. “Throttle me? Hit me? What would you do that could create greater pain than has already been given to me?”
He was close enough to see the flecks of turquoise in her irises, and the faintest of lines at the edge of her eyes. A small dimple—no, a scar—winked at her throat.
Trachea, he thought, heart slowing, stomach cramping. A tracheotomy scar.
Someone had cut her trachea, opening her air tube so she could breathe. Throat squeezing closed, ice water filling his veins, he staggered to his feet, moved blindly away, his robe swirling.
Impossible.
Couldn’t be.
Diane was dead. Dead. And the dead did not come back to life. Not even in magical Venice. Yes, in the first year after the accident he’d dreamed of her night after night—dreamed she was still alive, dreamed they were together still—but he hadn’t dreamed of her in over a year now, and finally he was free to move on. Knew he had to move on, whether or not his heart was ready. Because his son needed him to move on. His son needed a mother, a family.
But this woman … so very much like Diane.
He turned his head slowly, slowly, and she was still there, sitting still, regal, defiant on his sofa.
“Do you abuse women now, Dom?” she choked, her cheeks suffused with color. “Is that what death has done to you?”
Diane would have never spoken to him this way.
Domenico ground his teeth together to keep from shouting. He didn’t shout. He didn’t care. He didn’t feel. But right now he was wild on the inside. Wild, bewildered, stunned.
He’d died when they’d told him Diane was gone. He’d gone into cardiac arrest. And he’d been glad he was dying, had known he was dying. Wanted it.
But they’d brought him back after three minutes. Brought him back to the living. Only he wasn’t the same. Part of him was gone forever.
Even now, thinking maybe, maybe, it was her, he couldn’t feel. Couldn’t hope. Couldn’t dream.
He’d loved her too much. And losing her had almost killed him. He would never love anyone—not even his Diane—again.
“I
