The Sicilian's Forgotten Wife by Caitlin Crews

Author:Caitlin Crews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-06-03T13:00:05+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

TRY AS HE WOULD, Cenzo could not seem to access the great and abiding joy his employer told him he had once possessed in his job. In his life, which apparently demanded total immersion in that job.

“I have never met a happier servant,” the signora had told him merrily while his head had still been pounding in that doctor’s office. “You have often told me that you could not think of a single thing you would prefer to do. And, sure enough, your joy infused every moment of your day, every task you completed, everything you said and did.”

A week later, Cenzo could not imagine how that could ever have been so. He felt a great many things as he sank back into his role, but none of them were joy.

Or even adjacent to joy, by his reckoning.

They had not gone to the hospital in Taormina. His employer had waved a breezy hand and told him that she would be happy to monitor him herself, unless, of course, he had a driving need to seek hospital attention, in which case she would have him transported down the coast at once. And Cenzo did not have to dig particularly deeply to feel that he did not have any such need.

His head had hurt that first day. There’d been a ringing in his ears, that pounding, and a headache every time he so much as drew breath, it seemed. When they’d left the doctor’s office, she’d encouraged him to get into the back seat of the SUV that waited for her and had left him there a moment while she conferred with the driver. No doubt he should have listened to the conversation. He should have tried to glean any information he could about the bewildering state he found himself in.

But instead, he’d simply...sat there. And had the distinct sensation that allowing another to cater to him while he remained in the dark was new to him, in some way.

Which would make sense as a servant, he supposed.

They’d driven down to the water, where the signora had a boat waiting. A boat she piloted, only waving him off when he suggested that perhaps he ought to do the honors. For surely that was his role.

“Who knows if you remember how to operate a boat?” she’d asked in her merry way. “I’d rather not discover that you don’t remember a thing while we’re in the open water, if you don’t mind.”

He had felt as if he ought to argue about that, but hadn’t.

And then she’d taken him across the water to a desolate slab of rock topped with ruins, where, she claimed, they would remain for a month.

He had helped as best he could—happy that the painkillers the doctor had given him had kicked in—while she brought the boat into the rocky, unwelcoming shore, then moved it back out again while towing the waiting rowboat. She’d thrown down an anchor and then had made as if to row them to shore.

Cenzo had drawn the line at that.

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