Castelli's Virgin Widow. CAITLIN CREWS

this was exactly what had happened when Kathryn tried to defy her and strike out on her own. Kathryn felt a sinking feeling in her gut, as if maybe Rose was right.

      And maybe it was hideously disloyal, maybe it made her a terrible person and an ungrateful child, but Kathryn really, really didn’t want that to be true.

      “You painted a target on my back,” she said now, her lips feeling numb. “You did it deliberately.”

      This time, Luca’s smile reached his eyes, but that didn’t make it any warmer. Or this situation any better. “I did.”

      Then he pushed open the conference room door and fed her straight to the wolves.

CHAPTER FOUR

      THREE HARD WEEKS and two days later, Kathryn boarded the Castelli family private jet on the airfield outside Rome, this time in her capacity as the most hated employee in Luca’s office. She marched up the folded-down stairs with her back straight and her head high—because that title, of course, was an upgrade compared to her previous role as the most hated stepmother in Castelli family history.

      She thought she had this being-loathed thing under control.

      It was all about the smile.

      Kathryn smiled every time conversation halted abruptly when she entered a room. She smiled when her coworkers pretended they didn’t understand her and made her repeat her question once, then twice, so she’d feel foolish as her words hung there in the air between them. She smiled when she was ignored in meetings. She smiled when she was called on to answer questions about past projects she couldn’t possibly know anything about. She smiled when Luca berated her for allowing unrestricted access to him and she smiled brighter when he let his people in and out the side door of his office himself, so he could do it all over again.

      She smiled and she smiled. The benefit of having been splashed across a thousand tabloids and held to be so good and so self-sacrificing was that she found she could use Saint Kate as a guide through each and every one of her chilly office interactions. Especially because she was well aware that the less she reacted, the more it annoyed her coworkers.

      Luca, of course, was a different issue altogether.

      She ducked into the plane and made her way into the upgraded living room space, smiling serenely as she took her seat on the curved leather sofa that commanded the center of the room. Luca was already sprawled out at one of the tables to the side that seated three apiece in luxurious leather armchairs, one hand in his hair as usual and the other clamping his mobile to his ear.

      He eyed her as he finished his conversation in low Italian, and didn’t stop when it was done.

      “You’re still here,” he said. Eventually.

      She smiled brighter. “Of course. I told you I wouldn’t leave.”

      “You can’t possibly have enjoyed these past few weeks, Kathryn.”

      “You certainly went out of your way to make sure of that,” she agreed. She showed him her teeth. “Much appreciated.”

      He frowned, and she smiled, and that went on for so long, she was tempted to turn on the big-screen television and ignore him—but that was not how an employee would behave, she imagined.