His Betrothed Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Excerpt

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Books by Vivian Leiber

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  “I love you,” he said. “I always have. I always will.”

  She stopped dead in her tracks. She wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly, and she didn’t have the nerve to ask him to repeat himself.

  Zach strode behind her and touched her hair. “But the facts don’t change. If you stay you’ll be used as a pawn or worse by the D.A. or by your family. You’ll be in danger.” He gripped her shoulders and turned her to face him. Intently he looked into her eyes. “And you have to leave, because if you stay…I can’t stop myself from wanting you, from wanting you to be my wife. And if you are, think of the alliances that will be forged. How we’ll be used, how our children could be used.”

  In a moment of blinding clarity, she understood.

  “I wish I had a lifetime to give you,” he said. “I wish I had at least one night to make love to you, but all I can give you now is a kiss.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Vivian Leiber was a Chicago trial attorney for many years before pursuing her first and truest love—writing. She lives in the North Shore of Chicago, among people very much like the ones she writes about. She has two adult children and two younger boys who are just wild enough to be a lot of fun.

  Books by Vivian Leiber

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  416—HIS KIND OF TROUBLE

  HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

  576—BABY MAKES NINE

  640—BLUE-JEANED PRINCE

  655—MARRYING NICKY

  672—A MILLION-DOLLAR MAN

  686—ALWAYS A HERO

  712—AN ORDINARY DAY

  Don’t miss any of our special offers. Write to us at the following address for information on our newest releases.

  Harlequin Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canada: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ontario L2A 5X3

  His Betrothed

  Vivian Leiber

  This book is dedicated to Denise, who has to have

  a lot of faith and a lot of energy to work with me; to

  Officer Bob Kerner, who never hesitates to tell me the

  real story behind the story; and my two boys—

  Joseph and Eastman, thank you for taking Mommy’s

  manuscript to the post office.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Zach Martin—He did what was right—protected the weak, upheld the law and gave up the woman he loved. But when a brutal double murder brings his Angel home, he must give up what’s right for what will save her life.

  Angel Sciopelli—She has made a new life, quiet and solitary. But the brutal murder of her parents brings her back to face harsh reality and Zach. Can she walk away from the man who would have been her husband?

  Patrick O’Malley——He has a city to defend, so he uses his only available weapon—Angel, whose past catches up to her future.

  Guy Martin Jr.—Zach’s elder brother is a braggart, a gambler, a bully and a drunk—but a stone-cold killer?

  Tony Sciopelli Jr.—His parents’ death leaves him with many responsibilities. Cultured and competent, he alone can keep his family’s business profitable and his brothers Rocco and Salvatore in line.

  Maria Sciopelli—She seems to have it all—career, husband, family. But something is missing, something deadly.

  Isabel—A fashion model with Salvatore’s ring on her finger, she comes into the family home for a funeral instead of her own wedding.

  Guy and Jeanne Martin—This couple is wanting for nothing. Except maybe revenge.

  Prologue

  “Angel, I don’t think this is a good idea,” Zach said, glancing back at the Sciopelli house. As her fingers tugged him, he felt her gold ring studded with peridot and citrine, their birthstones, against his palm. He had given her the ring this evening, after the prom, knowing that the more formal diamond should wait. But there was no question that she was his, had been promised to him on the day of her christening. But she was not his completely, he conceded, glancing back to the whitewashed Mediterranean stucco mansion again.

  The light from her father’s second-story window was bright and accusatory.

  Zach was brought back to the pleasures of the night by the image of Angel in the moonlight. A sheath of white silk dipped scandalously over her high, swelling breasts and nipped in at her tiny waist before billowing to gossamer light clouds that ended at her beribboned silver slippers. She had begun the evening with her buttery blond hair pulled back into a severe and complicated style studded with pearls, but now, as he reached down to pick up a pearl pin that had come undone, waves of flaxen caressed his fingers.

  As he rose, he came face-to-face with Angel, her hands on hips, pale blue eyes luminous and large.

  “Are you saying you don’t want to?”

  “Of course I do. You know that.”

  “Well, I do, too. I’m a high school graduate now. You don’t have to treat me like a child. And besides, Zach, we’re nearly married.” She jabbed her finger at him playfully.

  “There’s a difference between nearly and married,” Zach said, feeling his reasoning tumbling down a slippery slope into raw animal action. “Your father trusts me. He always has. I can’t break that trust.”

  Her eyes were smoky from tiredness and longing. Her mouth, full and pouting, shiny and ready for him. He was aware that he, at twenty-one and a man, had suffered his share of restless nights and cold showers. But Angel was just coming into her sexual moment—her feelings were new and as confusing and frightening as any frontier. He felt protective toward her.

  But then again, he always had.

  “Zach,” she whispered, in just that way she had, the way that made his defenses crumble. “I’m not a child anymore. I want to be a woman. Your woman.”

  “You shouldn’t push me like this,” Zach warned.

  But she pushed him, utterly and completely to his limit. And when her hand reached into the black-as-midnight dinner jacket with a boldness that neither would have ever expected her to possess, he was undone. And she didn’t back off.

  “Angel,” he moaned.

  “Come with me,” she whispered bewitchingly.

  Through darkness punctuated by fireflies, Angel Sciopelli led Zach down the lily-scented garden path to the pool cabana. The pool was illuminated, water vapor rising like magician’s smoke. She pulled him into the terra-cotta dressing area, its familiar smell of chlorine reminding him of all the stolen kisses of their childhood, all the times he would have, could have—but didn’t because she was Angel, special, innocent and as precious as a bride should be.

  Besides, their fathers had made a promise on her christening day when he was just four. And Zach knew that he’d be a fool to lose her.

  “Tell me you’re not like them,” she said, giving just the barest nod in the direction of the house before tugging at her dress.

  He glanced at the house, its many levels lit by dra
matic garden lights. He wondered at her question, so peculiar. She adored her father and worshipped her three brothers—Angel would like nothing better than to believe that all of the men in her life were essentially of the same high character.

  But all thought stopped as her dress fell to the ground. She stood before him in a pale bra and stockings, a garter belt that secured shimmering sheer stockings. She looked as knowing as a lingerie catalog model and, paradoxically, as unsure of herself as the virgin she was.

  “Tell me,” she repeated with unaccountable passion. “Tell me you’re not like them.”

  He wondered briefly how much she knew and then shook his head. She couldn’t have figured it out. It had taken him nearly a year to understand himself.

  “I’m not,” he said. And he knew much of what he said was true. Much of it. “I’m not like them.”

  “I knew it,” she said, smiling happily. “I knew it”

  She knelt on the chaise, looking up at him. He could talk, he could ask her what she meant or he could take her. And while another man might choose differently, Zach was young and he had waited so long, so long.

  He tugged off his bow tie, undid the pearl buttons of his pleated shirt and then and only then allowed himself to touch her. He began with a kiss, listened to her soft sigh, and then trailed a rough but restrained hand along the base of her neck, pausing at the jumping pulse before he continued. There was no turning back for either of them.

  He felt his pleasure as much in guiding her to new peaks as he did in satisfying his own need to possess her.

  Afterward, they lay spoonwise on the chaise.

  “We have to leave,” she said, her voice startling him from a moment of rare calm. “I heard them talking—your father and mine—earlier today. It was about the indictment.”

  The word sounded coarse and vulgar as she said it

  “What do you know about any indictment?”

  “I read the papers,” she said smartly. “I went to my father’s study to ask him about it. At the door, just before I knocked, I heard the two of them. My father said it would end—” Her voice broke with emotion. “He said it would end with either him or O’Malley, the state’s attorney, in the grave.”

  Zach stiffened. This was more than she should know. Much more.

  “Then what happened?” he asked neutrally.

  “I walked in and asked my father to explain,” Angel replied. “He said that the building trades have always been the target of government interference. He said that years ago, the Mafia had its hand in so many different construction companies and unions that a regular businessman had suspicion cast upon him even when he didn’t deserve it.”

  “And was that enough?” Zach questioned her with deceptive casualness.

  “No,” Angel said vehemently. “And I can’t believe I was such a fool, never knowing where all this came from.”

  “What do you mean…all this?”

  “The house, the clothes, the private schooling, the red Corvette he got me as a graduation present. I’ve lived a very good life, Zach, but I’ve done so at the expense of what’s right.”

  Zach chose his next words with care.

  “Your father owns a company that builds things.”

  “But that’s not where this money comes from. He uses the legitimate business to shield other, less legitimate enterprises. Like money laundering, gambling…I don’t even want to think about the rest.”

  “You don’t think he’s an honest contractor?”

  “No,” Angel said bluntly.

  He couldn’t see her face now, but he could feel her tension. It matched his own.

  “Do you believe he’s honest?”

  “No,” Zach confessed. As much as he knew it would be better to lie, he couldn’t. His feelings were still too raw, too vivid, about her father.

  “Then you’ll leave with me, won’t you?”

  “Where are you going?” he asked with alarm.

  “Anywhere. Someplace. I don’t know where. But I can’t stay here. You’re going with me, aren’t you? You must have been staying all this time because you thought I was too young to leave. But now I’m old enough. And I’m your wife.”

  “We’re not—”

  “We are married,” she insisted. “You made me your wife just now. Here in your arms. It’s even more precious than a church ceremony.”

  “I…I can’t leave.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “Yours. Ours. The right side.”

  “Then you’ll go with me. Your father’s involved, too. You must know that. Every time Martin trucks deliver a load from a materials contractor to a Sciopelli site, they are reloaded with drugs, weapons, other contraband. Our fathers couldn’t do it without each other.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “Then let’s go. Start a new life. Now. Tonight. Every day we stay is wrong.”

  Zach eased his body upright, kissed her shoulder and came to a decision.

  “All right, we’ll go,” he said steadily.

  Her relief and trust were palpable.

  “Oh, Zach, I knew loving you was always right. That you’re good and kind and strong, and I promise you you’ll never regret going with me. We’ll make a new life. All our own. I’ll be a good wife to you. And I’ll give you beautiful children.”

  They each thought of the future. She smiled radiantly, her face turned up to see the moonlight filtering from behind the birch trees. Zach ran his fingers through his hair, trying to forestall a headache.

  “I’m sure you will be a good wife,” he said. “Now, here’s what we’ll do. I’ll buy us some plane tickets. Does Las Vegas sound good? We can get married there. I’ll have the tickets waiting at the United counter at O’Hare airport. I’ve got some business to tie up, so you pick up your ticket and meet me on the plane. Deal?”

  “Deal,” she said, and leaned in the darkness to kiss him. He felt her tears—or were they his?—against his cheeks. And then, in an instant, she was dressed and gone, taking the scent of vanilla and baby powder with her. “Till tomorrow,” she said with a last bit of hope and love and a kiss as sweet as cotton candy.

  “Goodbye, Angel,” he said, picking up the corsage that he had attached to her dress earlier. His fingers caressed the white roses and baby’s breath. And then, in a swift and brutal gesture, he crushed the flowers in his hand and cursed the fates that had made him who he was.

  Chapter One

  It was a terrible day for a funeral, Zach Martin thought as he pulled the charcoal-colored suit jacket over his broad, muscular shoulders.

  The afternoon was too sunny, too tantalizingly warm, too lush with shocking pink tulips and duckbill yellow daffodils blooming in abundance on the borders of the well-manicured lawn surrounding Chicago’s Sacred Heart Cathedral.

  A day for the living, not for the dead.

  Raking a hand through his hair, Zach scanned the parade of long, sleek, jet black limousines depositing mourners at Sacred Heart’s Gothic arched doors.

  He locked his sporty red Camaro, wondering if Angel would…no, she wouldn’t come, he told himself. He only allowed himself the briefest memory of Angel, the most beautiful woman he had ever known, the woman who had been promised to him in marriage and the only woman he had ever betrayed.

  He tormented himself with the image of crystallike aquamarine eyes. The clean scent of talc and vanilla. The sound of her voice as she said his name. The slender curve of her legs and the way her lips broke into a heart-stopping smile when she was truly happy. Her hair, long tender curls, warm blond in winter and sun-kissed white by the end of July.

  His recollection was as vivid as the last moment he saw her, a flash of white cloudlike fabric skittering across the moonlit courtyard, running toward a future that she thought would include him.

  She wouldn’t come back today, he thought as he walked toward the church. Angel had never once come home for holidays, birthdays, weddings or christenings. Zach had graduated from college and then
law school, been sworn to practice in the state and federal courts, had won his first major trial—all without his betrothed at his side. He never even knew where she was, although he knew that he had ways to find out.

  But he had, with the discipline of a recovering alcoholic, never satisfied himself.

  No, she wouldn’t come to bury her parents.

  She might not even know of her father’s and mother’s deaths, although the ambush at the posh restaurant after a meal meant to celebrate the ground-breaking for the new Winnetka Shopping Mall had been the lead story on several national news wire services. Zach had come to the dinner only out of obligation to his family and, by arriving late, he had been just in time to see the carnage.

  Just in time to cradle Mrs. Sciopelli in his arms as her life ebbed. On the parkway around them, the Sciopelli brothers shouted contradictory orders and futilely called for help.

  Luckily Maria and Isabel hadn’t even arrived for the dinner yet and were to be spared the sight of Papa and Mama Sciopelli dying scant yards from each other.

  “Oh, Zach,” Mrs. Sciopelli had moaned in Zach’s arms. “Protect my little Angel.”

  She had never said a word to him in all the years since Angel left. But he suspected, in those final moments, that she knew the truth of why he had stayed.

  “I will,” he promised her. “I always have and I always will.”

  She was satisfied, as satisfied as she had been when he had stood, four years old and wearing a tie for the first time, at the wicker bassinet, staring at the most beautiful baby in the world. His Angel. She had fretted in her long christening gown, had grasped his finger and cooed. And he had fallen in love.

  “You protect my little Angel,” Mrs. Sciopelli had said, picking up her daughter and taking Zach’s hand to walk to the garden where the party was gathering for the blessing.