The #1 Bestsellers Collection 2011(60)

For a few hairy seconds she almost thought they would make it, the two of them almost enough to get the helicopter under control. Until the second bird hit. It penetrated the cockpit like a missile, a sickening crunch that sprayed blood and gore everywhere as it slammed into the pilot.

‘Randall!’ she screamed, as he slumped over his controls, feathers stuck to blood she had no way of knowing belonged to him or the bird.

She battled to push him back into his seat while trying to manage the controls for both of them, the rock looming ever larger, the wind wilder where the rock ended and the sea began.

And then there it was, the tiny patch of sand, barely visible in the growing darkness but there, calling out to her like an invitation, a siren’s call.

‘Let’s hope not,’ she muttered through grim lips as she battled the wind and rock and a failing aircraft.

Rafe was still fuming, stalking around Sienna’s room, waiting for her return, when Sebastiano found him. ‘Prince Raphael,’ he said with a small bow.

‘Not now,’ he said gruffly, turning away, not interested in the minutiae of the affairs of state when something of momentous proportions had just taken place. Something he was still battling to get a handle on.

Sienna had said she loved him. Why? How could it have happened when their mothers’ stories were so similar? How could she embrace love after what her mother had gone through?

But she hadn’t embraced it.

He thought about her arguments, her protests. She hadn’t wanted to love him. Something he could identify with.

And yet she did love him. There was something totally unidentifiable about that. Though, at the same time, something unexpectedly and oddly satisfying.

‘I think you will want to hear this.’

‘Didn’t you hear me? I said, not now!’ He was still trying to make sense of it, trying to work out why his gut felt so twisted and torn and just plain wrong when he’d done what he’d thought was right and got rid of any chance of someone loving him.

Except knowing he’d achieved that didn’t make him feel any better. It made him feel a damn sight worse. And he was damned sure his father had never felt this bad when he’d exiled his mother, or he would have changed his mind in a heartbeat and kept her for his own.

And the gears crunched some more before settling into a new configuration, something that worked on a different level.

And he remembered another time, another evening, when he’d walked that cliff-top walk with her, and he’d felt the swelling inside that had told him that this marriage would work, and at last he realized what that feeling had truly been. Not a beast inside him, needing to be fed, but a heart so crusted in tragedy and pain that it had taken a woman like Sienna to shed light and crack it free.

He hadn’t had to make her see this marriage would work. She’d shown him the light, she’d made it possible.

He couldn’t send her away, because he needed her here now, with him every day of his life. And without fully understanding why, something told him that he had missed an opportunity back there in her room to tell her what he really thought, feelings he was still trying to come to terms with, feelings that would not be suppressed, no matter how much he denied them.

‘But it concerns Signorina Wainwright.’

The wind gusted around the castle then, pummelling the walls and rattling windows until they shook, and a niggling seed of premonition buried itself inside him and took root.

‘What is it?’

‘She was seen leaving in the helicopter. The one that brought Princess Marietta.’

He looked to the windows, where the tops of trees could be seen dancing wildly in the wind, leaves flying past, the rumble of thunder like an omen.

‘She’s out in this? Why the hell didn’t anyone stop her?’

Sebastiano crossed his hands in front of him and dipped his head. ‘That’s not all. There’s been a Mayday call reported from the helicopter. Some kind of electrical fault, coupled with a birdstrike.’

Rafe didn’t hear the words. He felt them like boulders raining down, their pain etching his soul. ‘How far did they get from the island?’

‘The Guardia Costiera has been alerted, although in these conditions …’

‘How far did they get?’

Sebastiano hesitated, clearly uncomfortable with imparting his next piece of information.

‘Iseo’s Pyramid.’

Rafe’s blood ran cold. He’d sent her away. He’d told her to go. He might as well have sent her to the very Beast himself. Christo, why had it taken so long for him to realize what should have been so obvious all along? That he wanted this woman because he loved her, in spite of every warning he’d had, he loved her.