It’s different from your first marriage, yes?”

Completely different, he thought, biting down on his back teeth, his temper nearly flaring again. If pressed, he wouldn’t even call the brief twenty-one month arrangement a marriage. It was more like a disaster.

No, a nightmare.

Marilena stood on tiptoe and pressed a quick kiss to his mouth. “Don’t look so angry, darling. She won’t be here long, and she’ll have the girls with her. I know you’ve wanted a relationship with them—”

“That was a long time ago, before she held them hostage, before she used them against me. Maybe once they were my daughters, but they’re not mine anymore. Payton made sure of that.”

Marilena clucked softly. “That’s not true. They’re still your children. You adore the girls. I know you’ve missed them terribly.”

Marco swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat. He had missed them. He’d missed them so much he almost felt sick inside. “Payton knows I’ll sue for custody,” he said after a long moment. “She knows if she comes back, she’ll find it next to impossible to take them out of the country again.”

Marilena cocked her head. “So, why is she bringing them here now?”

Good question, Marco thought. A very good question indeed.

CHAPTER ONE

DEATH and taxes. The only two certainties in life. Death and taxes…

The words went around and around Payton’s head like the unclaimed luggage on the airport baggage carousel.

With a tired hand, she pushed the tangle of dark red curls from her forehead. She’d boarded the plane with her hair pinned up, but after fifteen hours traveling the curls had burst free from the French twist.

A black suitcase came sliding out the luggage chute and Payton carefully stooped to check the tag without disturbing the toddler slumped against her shoulder.

Wrong name. Not hers.

As Payton straightened she cradled the back of Gia’s head and glanced down into her sleeping daughter’s face. Wet tears still streaked Gia’s swollen cheeks, a testament to the hours Gia had wailed inconsolably for the small fuzzy blankie lost somewhere between boarding in San Francisco and changing planes in New York’s La Guardia airport.

It had not been an easy flight.

It had not been an easy month.

It had not been an easy life.

Payton’s lips twisted as she suppressed the rise of emotion. She couldn’t start thinking now. Thinking would only make everything worse.

She shot Livia a quick glance. “Are you okay, Liv?” she whispered, mustering a smile for Gia’s twin.

The three-year-old sat perched on top of an up-ended car seat, her thumb popped in her mouth, her arm clutching her own fuzzy blankie.

Livia nodded solemnly, her dark blue eyes the same shade as Payton’s. The girls had inherited Payton’s heart-shaped face, small straight nose, and dark blue eyes, but their gorgeous coloring came from their father. Onyx curls, light olive skin, the longest, thickest black fringe of eyelash imaginable.

Just thinking of Marco made Payton’s chest squeeze tight. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. When she’d left Milan two years ago she’d rashly vowed that nothing short of death would bring her back.

And it had.

Blinking, Payton concentrated on the moving carousel to keep the tears from forming.