Page 17 of Cursed

“That doesn’t look like Silas’s crest,” Prudence said, peering over.

“It’s not,” Edeena agreed. She frowned at the envelope. “It’s from the family lawyer. I can’t imagine . . .”

She took Prudence’s proffered letter opener and slit the creamy envelope open, then slid out a rich sheet of stationery atop a thick sheaf of copied pages. She quickly scanned the cover letter . . . and froze.

“Oh, no,” she said, lifting her gaze to Prudence’s startled face. “Oh, no, no, no.”

“What? What is it?”

But Edeena dropped her hands to her lap, staring out sightlessly as the magnolia trees waved. “This changes everything.”

Vince barely held his temper in check as he carried the couch around another set of stairs. “Are you serious?” he growled. “A third floor walk-up and this is the couch you wanted?”

“Almost there!” His brother’s voice sounded nearly desperate, and Vince put his shoulders into the couch, heaving it higher to give his brother a break in the weight. The twins had recently moved out of their parents’ house into their own apartment near the university campus, and he’d agreed weeks ago to help them move. Lord knew he needed the break from thinking about Edeena.

He grimaced, lifting the sofa higher as his brother yelped and scrambled further up the stairs. The second twin was waiting for them, offering completely unhelpful moving advice.

The indomitable Countess Saleri had been driving him and his detail crazy for the past two weeks. Not because she was causing them trouble—far from it. She’d basically been wasting her money. Not leaving the house, not relaxing, flitting around that big old mansion like she was some Civil War-era ghost. She’d explained it away by saying she needed to focus on her family’s financials, but there had to be more to it than that. It was like she’d given up.

“Excellent! Excellent.” He heard his mother’s voice announce her triumph, and he gritted his teeth further. Only a Greek mother would insist on managing her sons’ exodus from the family home, thereby somehow managing to trip up their first step toward independence before they’d even taken it. But his brothers would learn eventually.

And for the moment they were getting enough food and maternal nurturing to bury them.

“Bring it here, Vincent, it will be perfect.”

He moved in the direction of his mother’s voice, lowering the couch carefully so his brothers could maneuver through the piles of stuff that had accumulated on the floor. Even with his mother present, there was only so much cleaning that could happen in the midst of moving.

Together, he and his brother dropped the couch on the floor as gently as possible, and then the boy sprawled to the side, gasping as if he’d been asked to run uphill for an hour.

“Don’t plan on moving this back out, okay?” He surveyed the ugly couch one of the boys had gotten from . . . somewhere. “It’ll be easier to chop it up with an axe and throw it out the window.”

“Vincent, it’s good exercise,” tutted his mother. He didn’t miss her accusing dark eyes as she scowled at him. “And good for me, too. I haven’t seen you in a month. A month! How can you treat me so poorly?”

Vince grinned despite himself at her mortally wounded tone, and his mother’s face broke into a wide smile. “There it is, the smile I love so much,” she said. “Come here and help me pick up after your barbarian brothers, then walk me to the car so I can escape.”

For as much as much as his mother worked their Greek heritage, she also was a pragmatist. She’d not complained—much—when Vince had moved out himself after launching his security business in college, and she’d tried valiantly to encourage his brothers to leave the nest. The fact that they’d shown no real interest in flying away had served both parties well enough for the past few years, but now it seemed like his mother had come to terms with the boys growing up.

Which should have made Vince nervous, but at the moment, he was merely grateful to be finished lugging the couch upstairs.

“Come, come,” his mother said nearly a half hour later, the boys now deposited on the couch eating a pizza and the apartment as clean, he suspected, as they’d ever see it again. “Walk me back to civilization.”

She trotted down the three floors lightly enough, and he found himself appreciating anew how healthy she and his father were. How healthy and, if he was honest, how sane. Turning Edeena’s situation over in his mind had yielded only endless frustration. How could you combat a father who still believed in arranged marriage?

When they reached street level, his mother turned to him, her eyes searching and serious. He finally realized the danger he was in, but by then it was too late. He was trapped.

“So,” his mother announced imperiously. “When are you bringing Countess Edeena Saleri to our home, eh? Your brothers are gone now, it will take me one, maybe two days to clean. But then, she must come.”

“What?” he looked at her, stunned, then immediately put the pieces together. “Just how well do you know Prudence Vaughn?”

“Well enough that she was willing to tell me her young and beautiful cousin has a crush on you, and well enough that she begs me to encourage the flirtation, because this Edeena, she is so sad.” His mother’s Greek accent was surging to the fore again, a sure sign she was emotionally invested in the conversation. “It’s not like you to not help someone in need, Vince. I didn’t raise you to be so callous.”

“Edeena does not have a crush on me,” he protested, lifting his hands to ward off his mother’s accusation. “I’ve seen her every day for two weeks. Trust me, I’d know.” Even as he spoke the words, though, he ran his memories of Edeena through his mind. She’d been polite, cheerful, and reserved ever since the night at the club. While he hadn’t imagined the attraction between them then, she’d had a highly defined purpose at the time—irritating Janet Mulready. Which she’d done, and to spare. The woman had not texted Vince once since that night, and he suspected she had quite definitely moved on.

“Ah! You are making some important connection. Tell me, I’m your mother.”

“I . . .” Vince shook his head, but what would it harm, truly? “Edeena Saleri doesn’t have a crush on me,” he said firmly. “But since she doesn’t, she . . . well, she did something that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“And that was?”

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