Nicolo: The Powerful Sicilian. Sandra Marton

       “I’m the potential investor,” he said softly, “not my father.”

      “That is not what I was told!”

      

      A muscle knotted in Nick’s jaw. She was staring at him through eyes so deep a blue they were almost violet. He’d stunned her, he could see that. Hell, he’d stunned himself.

      

      “Trust me, princess,” he said in a voice as rough as sandpaper. “The only Orsini you’re going to deal with is me.”

      

      Alessia Antoninni, the Princess Antoninni, shook her head. “No,” she said, and he silenced her the only way a man could silence a woman like this.

      

      He thrust his hands into her hair, lifted her face to his, and kissed her.

      Nicolo: The Powerful Sicilian

      By

      Sandra Marton

      

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      About the Author

      SANDRA MARTON wrote her first novel while she was still in primary school. Her doting parents told her she’d be a writer some day, and Sandra believed them. In secondary school and college she wrote dark poetry nobody but her boyfriend understood—though, looking back, she suspects he was just being kind. As a wife and mother she wrote murky short stories in what little spare time she could manage, but not even her boyfriend-turned-husband could pretend to understand those. Sandra tried her hand at other things, among them teaching and serving on the Board of Education in her home town, but the dream of becoming a writer was always in her heart.

      At last Sandra realised she wanted to write books about what all women hope to find: love with that one special man, love that’s rich with fire and passion, love that lasts for ever. She wrote a novel, her very first, and sold it to Mills & Boon® Modern™ Romance. Since then she’s written more than sixty books, all of them featuring sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life heroes. A four-time RITA® Award finalist, she’s also received five RT Book Reviews awards, and has been honoured with RT Book Reviews’ Career Achievement Award for Series Romance. Sandra lives with her very own sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life hero in a sun-filled house on a quiet country lane in the north-eastern United States.

      The patriarch of the powerful Sicilian dynasty,

      Cesare Orsini, has fallen ill, and he wants atonement before he dies.

      One by one he sends for his sons—he has a mission

      for each to help him clear his conscience.

      His sons are proud and determined,

      but they will do their duty—the tasks they undertake will change their lives for ever! They are…

      THE ORSINI BROTHERS

       Darkly handsome—proud and arrogant The perfect Sicilian husbands!

      by

      Sandra Marton

      RAFFAELE: TAMING HIS TEMPESTUOUS VIRGIN

      October 2009

      DANTE: CLAIMING HIS SECRET LOVE-CHILD

      December 2009

      FALCO: THE DARK GUARDIAN

      August 2010

      NICOLO: THE POWERFUL SICILIAN

      December 2010

      Chapter One

      THE wedding at the little church in lower Manhattan and then the reception at the Orsini mansion had made for a long day, and Nicolo Orsini was more than ready to leave.

      A naked woman was waiting in his bed.

      She’d been there when he left his Central Park West triplex at ten that morning.

      “Must you go, Nicky?” she’d said, with a pout almost as sexy as the lush body barely covered by the down duvet.

      Nick had checked his tie in the mirror, checked the whole bit—the custom-tailored tux, the white silk shirt, even his wing tips, spit-polished the way he’d learned to do it in the corps. Then he’d walked back to the bed, dropped a light kiss on her hair and said yeah, he did.

      It wasn’t every day a man’s brother got married.

      He hadn’t told her that, of course, he’d simply said he had to go to a wedding. Even that had been enough to put a spark of interest in her baby blues, but if he’d said it was one of his brothers doing the deed…

      Talk about the Orsini brothers and weddings was not a thought he cared to leave bouncing around in any woman’s head.

      “I’ll phone you,” he’d said, and she’d pouted again—how come that pout was becoming less of a turn-on and more of an irritation?—and said maybe she’d just wait right where she was until he returned.

      Nick lifted his champagne flute to his lips as he thought back to the morning.

      Damn, he hoped not.

      He had nothing against finding beautiful women in his bed, but his interest in this one was definitely waning and the female histrionics that sometimes accompanied the end of an affair were the last thing he wanted to deal with after a day like this. Much as he loved his brothers, his sisters, his mother, his sisters-in-law and his little nephew, there was such a thing as too much togetherness.

      Or maybe it was just him. Either way, it was time to get moving.

      He looked out the glass-walled conservatory at the garden behind the Orsini mansion. The flowering shrubs his sister Isabella had planted a couple of years ago were still green despite the onset of autumn. Beyond the shrubs, stone walls rose high enough to block out the streets of his childhood, streets that were changing so fast he hardly recognized them anymore. The Little Italy that had been home to generations of immigrants was rapidly giving way to Greenwich Village.

      Trendy shops, upscale restaurants, art galleries. Progress, Nick thought grimly and drank some more of the champagne. He hated to see it happen. He’d grown up on these streets. Not that his memories were all warm and fuzzy. When your old man was the don of a powerful crime family, you learned early that your life was different. By the time he was nine or ten, he’d known what Cesare Orsini was and hated him for it.

      But the bond with his mother and sisters had always been strong. As for the bond with his brothers…

      Nick’s lips curved in a smile.

      That bond went beyond blood.

      All day, his thoughts had dipped back to their shared childhoods. They’d fought like wolf cubs, teased each other unmercifully, stood together against kids who thought it might be fun to give the sons of a famiglia don a hard time. Barely out of their teens, they’d gone their separate ways only to come together again, their bond stronger than ever, to found the investment firm that had made them as wealthy and powerful as their father but without any of the ugliness of Cesare’s life.

      They were part of each other, Raffaele, Dante, Falco and him. Close in age, close in looks, in temperament, in everything that mattered.

      Was that going to change? It had to. How could things remain the same when one after another, the Orsini brothers had taken wives?

      Nick tossed back the rest of his champagne and headed for