His blue eyes burned through her. “You are going to come with me to Italy and live in luxury for the rest of your life.”

      Prince Maximo d’Aquilla. An exotic name. But he was more than a dream. He was a flesh-and-blood man, a Roman gladiator, hard of sinew and bone, with a powerful, dangerous edge. And he was too good to be true.

      She shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

      “I grow weary of this.” His eyes traced over her. “I do not have time. We both know you’re coming with me.”

      She almost couldn’t breathe. The man hadn’t been lying—it really was an offer straight out of her wildest dreams. To never have to scrimp again, wake up in a terrified panic in the middle of the night wondering how she’d pay her bills. To know Chloe was safe and warm and secure forever.

      Jennie Lucas grew up dreaming about faraway lands. At fifteen, hungry for experience beyond the borders of her small Idaho city, she went to a Connecticut boarding school on scholarship. She took her first solo trip to Europe at sixteen, then put off college and traveled around the US, supporting herself with jobs as diverse as petrol station cashier and newspaper advertising assistant. At twenty-two, she met the man who would be her husband. After their marriage, she graduated from Kent State with a degree in English. Seven years after she started writing, she got the magical call from London that turned her into a published author.

      Since then life has been hectic, with a new writing career and a sexy husband and two babies under two, but she’s having a wonderful (albeit sleepless) time. She loves immersing herself in dramatic, glamorous, passionate stories. Maybe she can’t physically travel to Morocco or Spain right now, but for a few hours a day, while her children are sleeping, she can be there in her books.

      Jennie loves to hear from her readers. You can visit her website at www.jennielucas.com, or drop her a note at [email protected]

      ITALIAN PRINCE, WEDLOCKED WIFE

      BY

      JENNIE LUCAS

      To Anna Marie Allen,

      auntie par excellence— I couldn’t have written this book without you.

      CHAPTER ONE

      HE’D found her!

      Prince Maximo d’Aquilla parked his Mercedes beneath a broken streetlight, staring at the brightly lit gas station. The shining light from the shop’s windows illuminated the snowy night like a flame in the darkness, silhouetting the girl working alone inside.

      Lucia Ferrazzi.

      The granddaughter of his enemy. The ex-lover of his business rival.

      Fate, he thought, gripping the steering wheel. Il destino. After all these years of looking, how else to explain it?

      His phone rang. Ermanno, one of the bodyguards waiting in the car parked behind him, said a single word: “Signore?”

      “Wait for my signal,” Maximo replied in Italian, and snapped his phone shut.

      He watched her for another five minutes. It was ten o’clock on New Year’s Eve, and the store should have been busy selling wine and beer; but the run-down South Chicago neighborhood was eerily dark and deserted beneath the heavily falling snow.

      The girl assisted her only customer at the cash register with a shy smile. Her scrubbed, clean face made her seem younger than twenty-one, he thought. Cat’s-eye glasses framed her wide-set brown eyes, giving her plain features a dowdy, bookish look.

      She would fall to him easily, he thought.

      The solitary customer left, and a gray sedan skidded to a stop near the gas pumps. A thin man stepped out of the car. He stared at the girl, spraying breath freshener into his mouth, then started toward the store.

      Maximo saw the alarm in the girl’s eyes, the way she bit her tender pink lip as she watched the slender man come toward the door. She was afraid of him.

      Maximo allowed himself a single, grim smile. She didn’t realize how much her world had changed.

      As of now, she was under Maximo’s protection.

      Before the clock struck midnight, she would be his bride.

      His revenge would be complete. And as for that other matter…

      He pushed the thought firmly from his mind. It would all be over. He would take her, and in three months, he’d be free. Free—of everything.

      “Oh, no,” Lucy Abbott whispered aloud. The sound of her voice echoed in the empty store.

      She leaned her head against the glass, watching as her smarmy manager came toward the door. She’d prayed she wouldn’t see him tonight. That he would have a date, a party, anything to keep him from stopping by to “check on the store.”

      Just one more week, she reminded herself with a deep breath. One more week to put up with Darryl’s crude jokes, the way he stared at her breasts beneath her cashier’s smock, the way he would “accidentally” brush his groin against her hip amid the narrow aisles of chips and candy.

      She’d applied to be an assistant manager at a nearby store, and she needed his good reference until her position was finalized next week. Then Lucy could say goodbye to him forever. And even better, she would get a raise. For the first time since her baby had been born, she would be able to have just one job instead of three—she could work just forty hours a week instead of sixty. She’d be able to spend a few precious hours with her baby every single day.

      Baby? Chloe wouldn’t be a baby much longer. Tomorrow was her first birthday. She could hardly believe it. In Lucy’s constant struggle to pay rent and medical bills and child care, she’d missed much of her daughter’s first year. She’d missed the first time her baby had rolled over, the first time she’d sat up by herself, the first time she’d crawled. She’d missed countless smiles and crying and happy jabbering…

      Stop it, she ordered herself, angry at how close she was to tears. Stop it right now.

      Darryl burst through the door with a hard ring of the bell, bringing a blast of wind and snow behind him.

      “Hey, Luce,” Darryl said with a leer on his pink, rubbery lips. “Happy New Year.”

      “Happy New Year,” she mumbled, hating that he called her Luce. It reminded her of the last man who’d called her that.

      “Busy tonight?”

      “Yes, very,” she lied over the lump in her throat.

      “Let me see.” She tried to flinch away, but he still managed to brush against her backside as he went behind the counter. He punched a few buttons on the cash register, then seeing the few dollars inside the tray, looked up at her accusingly. “Why, you little tease.”

      Pretending to laugh, she backed from him. “It’s been busy, really! See the floors wet with tracked snow? I’d better get a mop…”

      “Always such a busy little bee.” He sneered, stopping her with one bony, sinewy hand. “You really think you’re better than me, don’t you?”

      “No, of course not, I—”

      Darryl grabbed her blue smock, looking down at her, breathing hard. “I’m tired of being nice to you for nothing.”

      She heard the bell jingle above the door. But before she could look, he grabbed the back of her head, coming at her with his pink, rubbery lips.