Bargain Bride, Billionaire Groom Read online

  He’d touched the items thoughtfully, and expressed nothing less than appreciation—with a big kiss on her cheek as his chosen delivery method. She always had treats to send him off with ever since.

  Jio smiled now. “Of course I do. It gives me pleasure to do so. And rather than pick up the phone or hit reply to your e-mail, I thought what I had to say to you would be better said in person.”

  She nodded, and waited.

  “I’m happy to grant you a divorce, Golden. I would like to ask one more favor of you.”

  “Oh no. Not another one. What the hell, Jio? The last favor I did for you over two years ago landed us in front of a Justice of the Peace.”

  “I’m grateful to you for that, believe me. How are you doing otherwise? Has your monthly stipend been adequate?”

  She frowned. “Some things don’t have to have money signs attached. Not that it’s any of your business, but I don’t touch one cent of the money from Enzo’s estate. It goes into an account for Lily.”

  She gave a lot to local charities and causes that Enzo supported, but his brother didn’t need to know that. With an offended huff, she swung away from him.

  Jio hung back, struck silent by the seawater that trickled from her hair, dribbled between her shoulder blades and slid down her spine. As she walked up the stairs, the droplets sluiced into the luscious, peach-like cleft peeking up from her bikini bottom. He groaned.

  Listening to her swear had given her a wonderfully raw edge, too. What other words was she capable of uttering—or murmuring—in bed? Ah, well. A man could dream.

  “Golden.” He stepped after her. “Lily is set for the rest of her life. You really should be using that money for you. It’s what my brother would have wanted.”

  “I don’t need it,” she threw angrily over shoulder. “I never did. All that money did was make my baby a target of her father’s exes.”

  “But we showed them, didn’t we?” Jio’s voice rose as the distance between them widened. “Just so you know? I was proud to take you to Italy for my brother’s memorial service. I was proud to show off the lovely person who’d captured his heart.”

  She stopped at the landing. Grasping the rail with one hand, she turned around. Jio followed her up the stairs, and felt the impact of her beautiful face and sexy body rock his world, as usual.

  Her lustrous rosy cheeks and her heart-shattering smile—when she smiled at him—were ongoing reminders of how she’d enchanted him from the first day they’d met.

  Knowing the kind of sexually-schooled, worldly women his brother went for, nothing had prepared him for the day he’d first met the supple-limbed, golden-eyed beauty that shook his hand while shyly tucking her lower lip between pretty white teeth…

  Up-curved cheekbones, a turned-up nose and a shapely pink mouth bathed in the mid-day sun as his in-name only wife peered up at him. Her lower lip shivered.

  “I’m sorry it was all so terrible for you,” he apologized, careful not to dwell on the pulse throbbing in her neck, or the way every muscle in his body tensed in sexual response.

  “It wasn’t a pleasure trip. Enzo and I should have been on our honeymoon, you know?”

  “Believe me, I know.” Guilty heat rode his cheekbones. His brother meant to marry this woman, and all he could think about was kissing the beat now fluttering inside the delicate curve of her neck.

  Had it not been for that one night. That one kiss…

  He’d seen her since, of course. Nothing like that had been repeated—except in his dreams, and in his dreams they were doing much more than kissing.

  She lifted her chin. “But the past is the past, and it’s time for us to move forward. So what is it that you want to get me out of this marriage, Jiovanni?”

  A commotion coming down the steps waylaid his reply. Gado strolled toward them, holding a toddler in his arms whose shiny brown hair was twisted and pinned in a little bun on the top of her head. Busy chattering away, once she saw Jio, she pointed at him and waved.

  “Jee-oh Poppa!”

  “Hello, little one.” Jio smiled as Gado took Golden’s board out of his hands and exchanged it for the toddler. Raining kisses on Lily’s baby-powder scented cheeks, Jio asked, “What is your name again? I can’t remember. Help me, help me!”

  “Me Lily!” She puckered her baby rosebud lips and gave him a smooch on the cheek.

  Jio felt his heart glow. She looked so much like his brother—more so than Enzo’s other children. He smiled at Golden. “I can’t believe how quickly my niece is growing.”

  “Lily may not see you all the time, but she knows you. Don’t you, sweetheart?” She smiled at her daughter. “Oh, and by the way, Gado reeled in a nice pink snapper this morning.”

  “At least eight pounds,” Gado boasted. “Plenty for dinner tonight.”

  “I hadn’t intended on staying much past sunset,” Jio admitted.

  Gado, like Jio, caught the look that flared in Golden’s eyes. “Oops! Gotta go make some calls!” her brother announced, then strolled off to take the steps back up to the house, whistling with her board tucked jauntily under his arm.

  “Jio?” Golden’s brows winged together. “I thought you said you were extending your visit? You’re not going to stay the night and save yourself the drive?”

  Jio felt like a spectator, watching a volcano about to blow. She might keep him at an arms-length distance, but nothing got in the way of the turbo-charged tension that pulsed between them—beginning the day he arrived on the island for a scheduled visit over a year ago.

  While he couldn’t ignore it, he took great pains to avoid it. He wished his body would get the hint.

  “I meant that I’d stay a few extra hours. It will still take me two hours to drive back to the airport, Golden.”

  “Then why not sleep here?” she asked, as if she didn’t already know he never spent the night under her roof if he could avoid it.

  If he had to drive ten hours each way from the airport to Lani Kai, and back again, that’s what he would do. Ever since that Kiss, coming here and not being able to kiss her? Or touch her? Knife-jab to the heart torture. Sleeping here? What a joke. Knowing her sexy, untouchable self was in her bed down the hall from the guestroom would feel like a thousand kinds of hell!

  So, on his last three visits to Maui, he’d arrive a day early. His first order of business was always to visit Enzo’s grave at a local cemetery. Then he met with staff at his joint-owned seaside restaurant on Front Street, Wild Limone, the Italian restaurant that he and an American investor had co-owned with Enzo in Lahaina—west Maui’s historical whaling port and hot-spot.

  He’d put in hands-on work serving customers, and the following day he’d take to the scenic Hana coast to see Golden, Gado and Lily. Then he’d make the two hour trek back to Kahului where he boarded his jet, and left.

  “I suppose I could stay,” he said while his hungry body warned him he should decline her hospitality, for her own safety if not his sanity. “I’ve already checked in with the staff in Lahaina, so it’s not a problem.”

  Her cheeks pink from being so irked, Golden said, “It’s okay. Don’t change your plans, Jio. It shouldn’t take too long for us to address my e-mail.”

  She looked out through the trees at the horizon, at the sun hovering in mid-sky before turning the flustered snap of her gaze back to him. “Don’t change your plans for me.”

  Chapter Three

  Golden stepped out of her bedroom showered, fresh and feeling a little more calm. God knows she needed some calm. To that end, it was probably best that Jio left, she thought, walking across the hall to Lily’s nursery.

  After today, a lot was going to change. Jio wouldn’t be out here three times a year to visit them. He’d probably marry soon and have sweet, blue-eyed babies of his own to spoil.

  Golden’s throat started aching. Her heart staggered inside her chest. Could it be that she’d miss seeing him on a somewhat regular basis?

  In the nursery, Jio lay asleep on
the recliner with Lily curled up against his chest, also asleep and sucking her thumb. Her favorite storybook lay flopped apart on his knee.

  A breath of longing rushed through her lungs. If Enzo hadn’t died, he’d be holding his daughter just like this, but it wasn’t Enzo who held Lily in his arms. It was Jio—Jio with his bold features and rock-blue eyes that brimmed with seduction.

  His mouth that she learned first-hand could kiss like a devil was as skilled at throwing down words of destruction, too.

  Gold-digger.

  She clutched at the latch on the nursery door. While her mind couldn’t shake the memory of his insult, her fingers itched to melt into his hair, streaked in tones of clover honey from the heat of the Mediterranean sun. Worn longer than the last time she’d seen him, it was swept back behind his ears, its rakish cut stopping at the rugged snap of his jaw.

  So, it was going to happen. He agreed to divorce her and that part of her life would no longer be. Not that it ever was.

  She’d married Jio to give Lily the Falcone name. There’d been more to it than that, but giving her unborn baby the Falcone name was the means that justified the end. Her baby would be recognized as a Falcone, with legal rights as Enzo’s child.

  Two years later, those goals were met. There was still the matter of Lily’s Italian citizenship to address, but they didn’t need to stay married to complete the paperwork.

  Prepared to give her what she asked, was he? Her heart flopped nervously in her chest. There’d been something peculiar in the way Jio looked at her today. Something layered. Something heady. Something that warned her if she wasn’t careful, she might wind up giving him something of value in return.

  She’d best gather her bearings while she had a chance. While he slept.

  Golden backed away from the room and went in search of her brother. She found him in the kitchen, spooning some of Lani Kai’s espresso-ground coffee into a single-serve French press that he’d seated over her favorite tea cup.

  He looked up and smiled. “If Jio is anything like his brother, he’ll appreciate a cup.”

  “Too late.” She filled a glass up with water, stood in front of the sink and took a sip. “He could have used the caffeine blast earlier. He’s asleep in the nursery with Lily curled up in his arms like a baby monkey.”

  “She never wants to nap for me.”

  “She is going to miss you when you move out, you know.”

  “I won’t be far,” Gado assured her.

  He and his fiancée, Naomi Olsen, were getting married in four months, and pinned hopes on purchasing some land in upcountry Kula. While the property they’d looked at came with a nursery that supplied tropical flowers to local and mainland businesses, Gado’s new life and new venture meant that he’d be leaving the bulk of Lani Kai in Golden’s hands.

  “And neither will Marcus.” He stared at her slyly as he pressed holes into a can of condensed milk with a metal punch opener. “He called and said he’d be here at six for dinner, as planned. He wants you to call him if something comes up.” Her brother glanced down the corridor that led to the nursery and said, “You’d best pick up the phone right now, sis.”

  “I’m not canceling our dinner plans because Lily’s other uncle is here. And how could you forget to tell me that Jio was on his way to the island?”

  “I thought I told you.” He shrugged. “I must have forgotten. Oh well—it’s not like your marriage to the guy has been an exact science to the rest of us, yeah?”

  “You’re right, Gado. And that’s why we’re divorcing. All legal action from Enzo’s exes contesting his will over Lily’s inheritance was dropped after her birth. I didn’t rush to divorce Jio then because Lily’s eligibility for Italian citizenship needed to be established. I’m hoping it will, soon. I’m so ready to start living a more normal life. Whatever that means.”

  “It’s good to see you come alive whenever he’s around, Golden. It’s about time.”

  “Marcus is a good man.” She thought of her handsome neighbor with his rumple of dark hair and hazel eyes. She was ready to start dating again. Truth be told, she was ready to consider a physical relationship, too. Marcus was single, after all. But the good-looking cattleman wasn’t about to ditch his scruples and jump into bed with a married woman.

  While at ease with the circumstances surrounding her marriage-of-convenience, Marcus was not on board with courting her openly until she was well and truly divorced from Jio.

  “I’m not talking about Grayson,” Gado chortled. “I’ve seen you in action the second your husband—or whatever he is—calls to say his jet is leaving Rome and is on its way to the islands. You clear your calendar and fill vases all around the house with anthurium flowers from our premium gardens.”

  “So? I scrub toilets and water the houseplants, too. What do your great super-surfer powers tell you about that?”

  “Okay, Golden. New Year’s Eve? The one before last—the last time Jio stayed the night? After the fireworks show at the beach was over, all the guests left. You were putting Lily to bed. She cried and cried for Weezee, her little honu?” he named the Hawaiian word for turtle, a little plush version of which Lily cuddled herself to sleep with every night.

  “Yes.” Golden stared at her brother and held in a guarded breath.

  “You went back down to the beach to look for the turtle and left me in charge of putting her to bed. After Lily fell asleep, I followed after you to make sure you were okay. I saw that kiss between you and Jio. My eyes don’t lie.”

  He’d seen that kiss between herself and Jio? She exhaled a quiet sigh of relief.

  She hadn’t imagined that kiss, after all. Between the guests, food, music and fireworks, the baby had been fretful when she’d tried to put her to bed. Golden asked Gado to keep an eye on Lily while she went down to the beach to find Weezee the turtle.

  The moon wasn’t full that night, but it hung big and luminous in the tropical sky. With the help of her flashlight, she found the stuffed toy on one of the picnic benches. She picked it up. As she turned to leave, she saw Jio standing along the shore—on the very spot where Enzo had taken his last breath.

  She’d frowned, confused. After the three of them, Jio, Gado and herself, had seen their other guests off, she’d said goodnight to Jio as well. Now here he stood, a carved silhouette gazing out at the ocean.

  Drawn to the aura of sadness surrounding him, she’d walked over to him, slipped a sisterly arm around his waist and rested her head on his chest. He’d stiffened.

  “Lily can’t sleep.” Golden wiggled the turtle under his chin. “Were you here all this time?”

  “Yes.” Jio’s arm curled around her shoulders. He held her so close she heard, and felt, his heartbeat quicken beneath his clothes.

  His evening scent flowed through her senses—a night-blend of bitter cocoa and musk. Confusion seeped into her mind. She gazed up at him, befuddled and tingling all over.

  She thought she was the only one feeling this way until Jio murmured, “Happy New Year, Golden,” and in one fluid move he gathered her in his arms and fastened his lips on to hers.

  She wished she could say it was only a kiss, a light kiss between friends that recognized the New Year.

  Had she not reached up to stroke the ledge of his cheek, it might have been. Had she not stood on the tips of her toes to press her lips harder against his, to tuck her curves up against his ropy muscles, it might have been.

  Had she hushed the moan of pleasure driven from her lips by his hands fanning across her back—holding her still, holding her close—it might have been.

  Desire surged like a predator rising up from fathoms deep in her soul, instead. It came out of nowhere and took her senses by storm. She dragged his head down to make the most of his kiss, loving the way his mouth ravished hers, and the sensuality he used to coax her lips open.

  When her mouth parted, he didn’t mount an invasion. He took his sweet, lazy time and savored her lips, tasted her tongue…sucked on and play
ed with it.

  Suddenly he was tonguing her inner mouth with hunger. Aggression. When she rubbed and rasped her tongue against his, he groaned and crushed her wildness against his hard body.

  One moment she was in his arms, and the next—Jio wrenched himself away from her reckless embrace. The cold snap of ocean winds replaced his warmth, as did Jio’s mental distance that could span seas.

  “Goodnight,” he said, and left her standing alone. Alone, shaking and dealing with uneven heartbeats that boomed like thunder in her chest. Never once did he look back.

  If it wasn’t for his scent lingering on her skin, the honey ale taste of his mouth clinging to her tongue, she would have gone to her grave questioning her sanity about those dizzying moments on the shore…

  Knowing that someone else had seen that kiss put her mind at ease, even if her body had yet to get a clue. Common sense didn’t work when Jio was around. And while there hadn’t been any more lip-smacking, heart-thumping kisses between them since, nothing felt the same, either.

  Heat seethed beneath their interactions. When they connected with a look, it was a struggle to drag their eyes away.

  There could be nothing more between them. He’d made that very clear when he left her on the shore. His blood link to Enzo did give her cause to stop, think and think hard. Because of it, she had to move on—with someone else.

  “There is nothing wrong with your eyes, Gado,” Golden presently said, hoping her cheeks weren’t on fire from the memory of that night. “But you know the kiss went no further. Jio made sure of that. As for tonight, I’m actually hoping he’ll be gone by the time Marcus arrives. If not, then I’ll set the table for one more person.”

  He shrugged. “Does Jio take his coffee Vietnamese-style, as Enzo did?”

  “I don’t know.” Golden looked thoughtful. “They’re different as night and day.”

  Except maybe in their taste in women. Jio found her attractive. Physically, sexually… And while she hid her awareness of it as best she could, her nerves were frazzled from all the lightning-strikes of attraction zapping in both directions.