in her parched throat, and her body felt as battered as a discarded piñata.
Like many foolish souls before her, she had challenged the Fates—and lost. She moaned. She would have rather remained in the grip of somnolence. Oblivion was safer.
“Signorina Bennett?” The resonant baritone flavored with a rich Italian accent echoed from the abyss. “You are awake?”
She jerked. She wasn’t dead.
But she hadn’t escaped the devil.
“Where are you?” His deep voice in the black void seduced her with the promise of warmth. Compelled her to reply.
She compressed her lips. If he didn’t know, she wasn’t drawing him a map.
“Are you all right?”
That depended on his definition of all right. Surviving a mob kidnapping, yacht explosion, failed escape attempt and near drowning probably qualified. If she were a cat, she’d be eight lives short and counting.
“Ariana? It’s Dante.”
A shiver glided up her spine. As if she wouldn’t recognize the alluring voice of the man who had held her hostage for almost six weeks.
At the end of August, an antiquities dealer in the Naples market had directed her to a nearby archaeological dig. She’d found Dante excavating at the site. A fierce, dark Napoletano with a big, hard-muscled body and spine-tingling voice. She’d asked a few questions, and the mob had kidnapped her. She’d been interrogated and almost killed by Dante’s partner. Then she’d been drugged and awoken in a strange house. Alone with Dante.
“Answer me, bella. I am also a prisoner.”
She peered into the oily gloom. That was a new tactic. Fragmented memories of the previous night tumbled into place. Was this an elaborate plan to gain her cooperation? Signor Dante had held her captive for a month before bringing her aboard a yacht. They’d drifted around the Mediterranean nearly two more weeks. Yesterday, a fiery explosion had destroyed the yacht and in the melee, she had been forced to rely on Dante to get her to shore. She’d tried to escape from him, but a few bullets from a guy in a Zodiac and they’d both ended up prisoners.
“We must act. We may not have much time before they return.”
They? He actually sounded concerned. If this was a ruse, he’d done a superlative job. If their predicament was real, who would cross the mob by attacking him? Unless he wasn’t working with the Camorra, Naples’s Mafia. Perhaps the Camorra had hunted Dante down and incinerated the yacht. She closed her eyes. Impossible to think with a hammering headache.
Maybe Dante had gone rogue and kidnapped her solo. That would explain why he hadn’t hurt her. She was his investment. It also explained why she hadn’t been ransomed. Dante labored under the misimpression her family owned valuable antiques, although she’d explained multiple times that they were less fiscally solvent than dot-com investors.
“Trust me,” his low tone coaxed.
Right. And he had a cactus farm in Venice for sale. She cautiously shifted on the ice-cold floor, and her abused muscles shrieked. Were they both prisoners of the mob?
“Trust me, Ariana,” he repeated fervently.
Even before Dante had kidnapped her, she’d felt so alone. So isolated. Her mother disapproved of her job on the ship, and Ariana hadn’t been able to disclose the truth about her mission. Her father’s former contacts were leery of her motives. Ariana had made friends among the cruise-line staff, but she couldn’t confide in them about her plans to clear her father’s name. And she was suspicious of two employees who had expressed a little too much interest in her. The priest was savvy about antiquities and gave lectures to the passengers in the library, but Father Connelly’s disposition wasn’t exactly saintly. And First Officer Giorgio Tzekas was a player with more lines than the telephone company.
She wanted desperately to trust in something—trust someone. Dante had not threatened or hurt her. He’d calmly refuted her fear that he meant her harm, and remained cool and aloof…while implacably refusing to release her.
“I know you are listening, signorina. Why won’t you answer?”
How did he know? She gnawed at her lower lip. Logic had failed during her five-month journey to restore her father’s reputation. She’d gotten nowhere. A woman of order and reason, she had been thrust into an alien universe.
“San Gennaro, mio bello, aiutami tu!” Distress tinged his muttered exclamation. “If you wish to live, speak!”
Ariana stifled a gasp. If he were bluffing, a Naples native wouldn’t petition their venerated patron saint, San Gennaro. She uncurled and stretched stiff, sore legs. Dante had shown kindness during her captivity. Clean clothing. Books and magazines. Hot cappuccino at breakfast. Of course, he’d locked her in her room when he’d gone to fetch them. But yesterday when they’d been forced to flee the yacht, he had not only saved her life, he had expressed empathy over her fear of deep water and carried her.
“I am bound hand and foot. If you are able, talk to me, per favore. We need a plan.”
What should she do? Though Dante’s large, capable hands could break her in half, he had handled her with carefully tempered strength. He had touched her only when necessary, and with respect. A wise woman would choose him versus the coarse thugs who had trussed her up and tossed her into the bilge like fish bait, even if his interest in her welfare was only because he thought he could trade her for money. At least he was dedicated to safeguarding his investment.
Adrift and floundering, she was forced to rely on instinct. Those instincts screamed at her to answer him.
Pain ground her joints as she struggled to sit up. “I—” the word emerged as a croak, and she cleared her throat “—I can get up. Just my hands are tied.”
“Grazie a Dio!” He uttered a relieved sigh. “Then you must come to me.”
Decision made, she refused to second-guess herself. “Easier said than done. It’s as dark in here as the inside of the Trojan horse.”
“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” His wry chuckle was oddly comforting. “Follow the sound of my voice.”
He issued calm commands and she replied as she blindly navigated the rolling maze. After long, frustrating moments of stumbling, she bumped against him. He was sitting on a crate, and she maneuvered herself down beside him.
He was so warm. Cold and scared, she couldn’t help huddling against his hard shoulder.
“You’re trembling.” He swiveled so they were pressed body to body, her cheek resting on his chest. Beneath the smooth cotton of his T-shirt, his heart beat strong and steady. The softness of his full beard caressed her face as he brushed his cheek over her temple. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” She retreated from the intimate contact, but stayed close enough so his body heat radiated to her chilled, shivering limbs.
“Turn around so we can loosen each other’s ropes.”
They turned their backs to one another. The mutual exploration of his large, callused hands and sinewy arms jolted her system…reminiscent of the power surge that had once fried her laptop. She’d read about Stockholm syndrome. Over time, hostages sometimes fell for their captors. But the very first moment on the dig site when Dante’s eyes had locked with hers, her heart had leaped into her throat and pounded so hard she’d nearly choked.
The intriguing Italian possessed a primal gravitational force. Whenever he was in sight, her gaze was pulled to him and her pulse galloped. Now, weeks later, she’d jettisoned the attempt to convince herself her reaction was fear. Like everything else since her father had died, her involuntary attraction to Signor Dante made no sense. He was so far from her preferred cultured academic, he bordered on Paleolithic.
Not to mention that he was a criminal.
She fumbled with the ropes binding