A Marriage Fit for a Sinner

  “Now, il mio angelo, I make you mine.”

  Billionaire Zaccheo Giordano walks out of prison into the chilling winter wind with only one thing on his mind: revenge on the treacherous Pennington family who put him there. And he’ll start with his ex-fiancée, Eva Pennington.

  When Zaccheo demands she wear his ring again to save her family from his wrath, Eva agrees. At least a marriage in name only allows her to keep her infertility secret. Until Zaccheo makes it clear their marriage will be real in every sense, including giving him an heir…

  A passionate read for Christmas nights!

  One eyebrow spiked. “You seem so confident I’m going to hand myself to you on a silver platter. Isn’t that a tad foolish?”

  There was that tone again, the one that said she didn’t believe him. That she thought this wasn’t some sort of twisted game on his part.

  “I guess we’ll find out one way or the other when the sordid details are laid out for you on Monday. All you need to concern yourself with today is picking an engagement ring that makes the right statement.”

  Eva’s striking green eyes clashed with his and that lightning bolt struck again. “And what statement would that be?” she challenged.

  Zaccheo let loose a chilling half smile that he knew made his enemies quake. “Why, that you belong to me, of course.”

  Seven Sexy Sins

  The true taste of temptation!

  From greed to gluttony, lust to envy, these fabulous stories explore what seven sexy sins mean in the twenty-first century!

  Whether pride goes before a fall, or wrath leads to passion that consumes entirely, one thing is certain: the road to true love has never been more enticing!

  So you decide:

  How can it be a sin when it feels so good?

  Sloth—Cathy Williams

  Lust—Dani Collins

  Pride—Kim Lawrence

  Gluttony—Maggie Cox

  Greed—Sara Craven

  Wrath—Maya Blake

  Envy—Annie West

  Seven stories by some of Harlequin Presents’s most treasured and exciting authors!

  MAYA BLAKE

  A Marriage Fit for a Sinner

  Maya Blake’s hopes of becoming a writer were born when she picked up her first romance novel at age thirteen. Little did she know her dream would come true! Does she still pinch herself every now and then, to make sure it’s not a dream? Yes, she does!

  Feel free to pinch her too, via Twitter, Facebook or Goodreads. Happy reading!

  Books by Maya Blake

  Harlequin Presents

  Married for the Prince’s Convenience

  Innocent in His Diamonds

  His Ultimate Prize

  Marriage Made of Secrets

  Faking It to Making It

  The Sinful Art of Revenge

  The Secret Wedding Dress

  The Price of Success

  The Untameable Greeks

  What the Greek’s Money Can’t Buy

  What the Greek Can’t Resist

  What the Greek Wants Most

  The 21st Century Gentleman’s Club

  The Ultimate Playboy

  In December 2015 look for Brunetti’s Secret Son featuring Romeo from A Marriage Fit for a Sinner.

  Visit the Author Profile page

  at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Contents

  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

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT FROM LARENZO'S CHRISTMAS BABY BY KATE HEWITT

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘ONE PLATINUM CHRONOGRAPH WATCH. A pair of diamond-studded cufflinks. Gold signet ring. Six hundred and twenty-five pounds cash, and...Obsidian Privilege Card. Right, I think that’s everything, sir. Sign here to confirm return of your property.’

  Zaccheo Giordano didn’t react to the warden’s sneer as he scrawled on the barely legible form. Nor did he react to the resentful envy in the man’s eyes when his gaze drifted to where the sleek silver limousine waited beyond three sets of barbed wire.

  Romeo Brunetti, Zaccheo’s second-in-command and the only person he would consider draping the term friend upon, stood beside the car, brooding and unsmiling, totally unruffled by the armed guard at the gate or the bleak South East England surroundings.

  Had Zaccheo been in an accommodating mood, he’d have cracked a smile.

  But he wasn’t in an accommodating mood. He hadn’t been for a very long time. Fourteen months, two weeks, four days and nine hours to be exact. Zaccheo was positive he could count down to the last second if required.

  No one would require it of him, of course. He’d served his time. With three and a half months knocked off his eighteen-month sentence for good behaviour.

  The rage fused into his DNA bubbled beneath his skin. He showed no outward sign of it as he pocketed his belongings. The three-piece Savile Row suit he’d entered prison in stank of decay and misery, but Zaccheo didn’t care.

  He’d never been a slave to material comforts. His need for validation went far deeper. The need to elevate himself into a better place had been a soul-deep pursuit from the moment he was old enough to recognise the reality of the life he’d been born into. A life that had been a never-ending whirlpool of humiliation, violence and greed. A life that had seen his father debased and dead at thirty-five.

  Memories tumbled like dominoes as he walked down the harshly lit corridor to freedom. He willed the overwhelming sense of injustice that had festered for long, harrowing months not to explode from his pores.

  The doors clanged shut behind him.

  Zaccheo froze, then took his first lungful of free air with fists clenched and eyes shut. He absorbed the sound of birds chirping in the late-winter morning sun, listened to the distant rumble of the motorway as he’d done many nights from his prison cell.

  Opening his eyes, he headed towards the fifteen-foot gate. A minute later, he was outside.

  ‘Zaccheo, it’s good to see you again,’ Romeo said gravely, his eyes narrowing as he took him in.

  Zaccheo knew he looked a sight. He hadn’t bothered with a razor blade or a barber’s clippers in the last three months and he’d barely eaten once he’d unearthed the truth behind his incarceration. But he’d spent a lot of time in the prison gym. It’d been that or go mad with the clawing hunger for retribution.

  He shrugged off his friend’s concern and moved to the open door.

  ‘Did you bring what I asked for?’ he asked.

  Romeo nodded. ‘Sì. All three files are on the laptop.’

  Zaccheo slid onto the plush leather seat. Romeo slid in next to him and poured them two glasses of Italian-made cognac.

  ‘Salute,’ Romeo muttered.

  Zaccheo took the drink without responding, threw back the amber liquid and allowed the scent of power and affluence—the tools he’d need for his plan to succeed—to wash over him.

  As the low hum of the luxury engine whisked him away from the place he’d been forced to call home for over a year, Zaccheo reached for the laptop.

  Icy
rage trembled through his fingers as the Giordano Worldwide Inc. logo flickered to life. His life’s work, almost decimated through another’s greed and lust for power. It was only with Romeo’s help that GWI hadn’t gone under in the months after Zaccheo had been sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. He drew quiet satisfaction that not only had GWI survived—thanks to Romeo—it had thrived.

  But his personal reputation had not.

  He was out now. Free to bring those culpable to justice. He didn’t plan on resting until every last person responsible for attempting to destroy his life paid with the destruction of theirs.

  Shaking out his hand to rid it of its tremble, he hit the Open key.

  The information was thorough although Zaccheo knew most of its contents. For three months he’d checked and double-checked his sources, made sure every detail was nailed down tight.

  He exhaled at the first picture that filled his screen.

  Oscar Pennington III. Distant relative to the royal family. Etonian. Old, if spent, money. Very much part of the establishment. Greedy. Indiscriminate. His waning property portfolio had received a much-needed injection of capital exactly fourteen months and two weeks ago when he’d become sole owner of London’s most talked about building—The Spire.

  Zaccheo swallowed the savage growl that rumbled from his soul. Icily calm, he flicked through pages of Pennington celebrating his revived success with galas, lavish dinner parties and polo tournaments thrown about like confetti. One picture showed him laughing with one of his two children.

  Sophie Pennington. Private education all the way to finishing school. Classically beautiful. Ball-breaker. She’d proven beyond a doubt that she had every intention of becoming Oscar’s carbon copy.

  Grimly, he closed her file and moved to the last one.

  Eva Pennington.

  This time the growl couldn’t be contained. Nor could he stem the renewed shaking in his hand as he clicked her file.

  Caramel-blonde hair tumbled down her shoulders in thick, wild waves. Dark eyebrows and lashes framed moss-green eyes, accentuated dramatically with black eyeliner. Those eyes had gripped his attention with more force than he’d been comfortable with the first time he’d looked into them. As had the full, bow-shaped lips currently curved in a smouldering smile. His screen displayed a head-and-shoulders shot, but the rest of Eva Pennington’s body was imprinted indelibly on Zaccheo’s mind. He didn’t struggle to recall the petite, curvy shape, or that she forced herself to wear heels even though she hated them, in order to make herself taller.

  He certainly didn’t struggle to recall her individual atrocity. He’d lain in his prison bed condemning himself for being astounded by her singular betrayal, when the failings of both his parents and his dealings with the establishment should’ve taught him better. He’d prided himself on reading between the lines to spot schemers and gold-diggers ten miles away. Yet he’d been fooled.

  The time he’d wasted on useless bitterness was the most excruciating of all; time he would gladly claw back if he could.

  Firming his lips, he clicked through the pages, running through her life for the past year and a half. At the final page, he froze.

  ‘How new is this last information?’

  ‘I added that to the file yesterday. I thought you’d want to know,’ Romeo replied.

  Zaccheo stared at the newspaper clipping, shock waves rolling through him. ‘Sì, grazie...’

  ‘Do you wish to return to the Esher estate or the penthouse?’ Romeo asked.

  Zaccheo read the announcement again, taking in pertinent details. Pennington Manor. Eight o’clock. Three hundred guests. Followed by an intimate family dinner on Sunday at The Spire.

  The Spire...the building that should’ve been Zaccheo’s greatest achievement.

  ‘The estate,’ he replied. It was closer.

  He closed the file as Romeo instructed the driver.

  Relaxing against the headrest, Zaccheo tried to let the hum of the engine soothe him. But it was no use. He was far from calm.

  He’d have to alter his plan. Not that it mattered too much in the long run.

  A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. While all three Penningtons had colluded in his incarceration, this new information demanded he use a different tactic, one he’d first contemplated and abandoned. Either way, Zaccheo didn’t plan to rest until all of them were stripped of what they cherished most—their wealth and affluence.

  He’d intended to wait a day or two to ensure he had Oscar Pennington where he wanted him before he struck. That plan was no longer viable.

  Bringing down the family who’d framed him for criminal negligence couldn’t wait till Monday.

  His first order of business would be tackled tonight.

  Starting with the youngest member of the family—Eva Pennington.

  His ex-fiancée.

  * * *

  Eva Pennington stared at the dress in her sister’s hand. ‘Seriously? There’s no way I’m wearing that. Why didn’t you tell me the clothes I left behind had been given away?’

  ‘Because you said you didn’t want them when you moved out. Besides, they were old and out of fashion. I had this couriered from New York this morning. It’s the latest couture and on loan to us for twenty-four hours,’ Sophie replied.

  Eva pursed her lips. ‘I don’t care if it was woven by ten thousand silk worms. I’m not wearing a dress that makes me look like a gold-digger and a slut. And considering the state of our finances, I’d have thought you’d be more careful what you splashed money on.’ She couldn’t stem her bewilderment as to why Sophie and her father blithely ignored the fact that money was extremely tight.

  Sophie huffed. ‘This is a one-of-a-kind dress, and, unless I’m mistaken, it’s the kind of dress your future husband likes his women to wear. Anyway, you’ll be out of it in less than four hours, once the right photographs have been taken, and the party’s over.’

  Eva gritted her teeth. ‘Stop trying to manage me, Sophie. You’re forgetting who pulled this bailout together. If I hadn’t come to an agreement with Harry, we’d have been sunk come next week. As to what he likes his women to wear, if you’d bothered to speak to me first I’d have saved you the trouble of going to unnecessary expense. I dress for myself and no one else.’

  ‘Speak to you first? When you and Father neglected to afford me the same courtesy before you hatched this plan behind my back?’ Sophie griped.

  Eva’s heart twisted at the blatant jealousy in her sister’s voice.

  As if it weren’t enough that the decision she’d spent the past two weeks agonising over still made her insides clench in horror. It didn’t matter that the man she’d agreed to marry was her friend and she was helping him as much as he was helping her. Marriage was a step she’d rather not have taken.

  It was clear, however, her sister didn’t see it that way. Sophie’s escalating discontentment at any relationship Eva tried to forge with their father was part of the reason Eva had moved out of Pennington Manor. Not that their father was an easy man to live with.

  For as long as she could remember, Sophie had been possessive of their father’s attention. While their mother had been alive, it’d been bearable and easier to accept that Sophie was their father’s preferred child, while Eva was her mother’s, despite wanting to be loved equally by both parents.

  After their mother’s death, every interaction Eva had tried to have with their father had been met with bristling confrontation from Sophie, and indifference from their father.

  But, irrational as it was, it didn’t stop Eva from trying to reason with the sister she’d once looked up to.

  ‘We didn’t go behind your back. You were away on a business trip—’

  ‘Trying to use the business degree that doesn’t seem to mean anything any more. Not when you can sw
oop in after three years of performing tired ballads in seedy pubs to save the day,’ Sophie interjected harshly.

  Eva hung on to her temper by a thread, but pain stung deep at the blithe dismissal of her passion. ‘You know I resigned from Penningtons because Father only hired me so I could attract a suitable husband. And just because my dreams don’t coincide with yours—’

  ‘That’s just it. You’re twenty-four and still dreaming. The rest of us don’t have that luxury. And we certainly don’t land on our feet by clicking our fingers and having a millionaire solve all our problems.’

  ‘Harry is saving all of us. And you really think I’ve landed on my feet by getting engaged for the second time in two years?’ Eva asked.

  Sophie dropped the offensive dress on Eva’s bed. ‘To everyone who matters, this is your first engagement. The other one barely lasted five minutes. Hardly anyone knows it happened.’

  Hurt-laced anger swirled through her veins. ‘I know it happened.’

  ‘If my opinion matters around here any more, then I suggest you don’t broadcast it. It’s a subject best left in the past, just like the man it involved.’

  Pain stung deeper. ‘I can’t pretend it didn’t happen because of what occurred afterwards.’

  ‘The last thing we need right now is any hint of scandal. And I don’t know why you’re blaming Father for what happened when you should be thanking him for extricating you from that man before it was too late,’ Sophie defended heatedly.

  That man.

  Zaccheo Giordano.

  Eva wasn’t sure whether the ache lodged beneath her ribs came from thinking about him or from the reminder of how gullible she’d been to think he was any different from every other man who’d crossed her path.

  She relaxed her fists when they balled again.

  This was why she preferred her life away from their family home deep in the heart of Surrey.

  It was why her waitress colleagues knew her as Eva Penn, a hostess at Siren, the London nightclub where she also sang part-time, instead of Lady Eva Pennington, daughter of Lord Pennington.

 
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