Wild and Wicked

Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Wild and Wicked Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Epilogue About the Author Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Beginning About the Author 
 
 
 
 
 Wild and Wicked
 
 Italian Stallions
 Book Four
 
 
 
 
 Mari Carr
 
 
 
 
 
 Copyright © 2023 by Mari Carr
 All rights reserved.
 No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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 Contents
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Wild and Wicked
 
 
 
 
 Chapter 1
 
 
 Chapter 2
 
 
 Chapter 3
 
 
 Chapter 4
 
 
 Chapter 5
 
 
 Chapter 6
 
 
 Chapter 7
 
 
 Chapter 8
 
 
 Chapter 9
 
 
 Chapter 10
 
 
 Chapter 11
 
 
 Chapter 12
 
 
 Chapter 13
 
 
 Chapter 14
 
 
 Chapter 15
 
 
 Chapter 16
 
 
 Chapter 17
 
 
 Chapter 18
 
 
 Chapter 19
 
 
 Chapter 20
 
 
 Epilogue
 
 
 
 
 About the Author
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Wild and Wicked
 
 
 
 
 
 Gianna, queen of to-do lists, clean freak, organizer extraordinaire, has her future all figured out. Dream job at twenty-four, engaged at twenty-six, married at twenty-eight, first baby at thirty. And she’s on her way to achieving that…sort of. She has a job, though it’s not a dream, and she even thought she had her guy. Until he dumped her just short of that engagement ring deadline.
 
 Enter Elio Moretti, king of the ice, the playboy hockey star who lives his life just one day at a time. When Gianna and Elio are trapped in his family’s cabin during a blizzard, the concept of opposites attract is put to the test. Until the tequila comes out.
 
 Their steamy one-night stand throws Gianna’s original plan out the window—and now she only has nine months to come up with another one. Lucky for her, Elio is very good at thinking on his feet and calls a play that just might give her everything she wants.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Chapter One
 
 
 
 
 
 Gianna was late. She’d debated not coming at all, but in the end, she decided she’d be better off spending this evening with her friends versus sitting in a too quiet, too empty apartment, alone with only her thoughts. Besides, there wasn’t a damn thing left in her place to clean.
 She’d scrubbed every single solitary inch of it over the past three months. Ever since Sam Mannarino, her boyfriend for the past eleven—ELEVEN—years told her he thought their relationship had run its course and they should call it quits.
 For the first couple of weeks after he’d packed up his stuff and moved out of the apartment they’d shared, she’d thought maybe he was just blowing off steam. After all, you don’t date someone for eleven years and not have a few fights or “we were on a break” moments that never lasted more than a week or two. But when he didn’t come back, didn’t respond to her occasional texts, and sent her one phone call straight to voicemail, she didn’t get depressed—she got fucking pissed off.
 And that anger hadn’t abated until…
 Until tonight.
 “You late too?”
 Gianna jumped slightly, so lost in her thoughts, she didn’t hear one of her best friends, Liza Moretti, walking up the porch steps behind her.
 “Sorry,” Liza added, when she realized she’d scared her. “Thought you heard me.”
 “I got held up. Last-minute shopping,” Gianna explained lamely, as Liza opened the front door to the house without knocking. Not that anyone would hear them if they did. The music emanating from the living room had hit a volume level that had the windows pulsating in time with the beat.
 Gianna’s girlfriend, Keeley Gallo, had moved into this mansion with her boyfriends—plural—Gio and Rafe last fall, the three of them so over-the-top, sweetly in love, it gave Gianna a toothache.
 Rafe had inherited the huge Gothic monstrosity—one they were all convinced was haunted by the ghosts of Rafe’s grandparents—and he and Gio were currently renovating it. They were living here while they did the work, but Keeley had eventually put her foot down, saying the mansion was too damn big to make their forever home.
 So Gio and Rafe had formed a partnership and decided to go into business together. Their plan—a brilliant one, in Gianna’s mind—was to turn the mansion into an inn. Once it was ready to open for business, they were hoping to buy a reasonably sized house to settle down in.
 Gianna had a degree in hotel management and, while she hadn’t brought up the subject yet, she was hoping to convince Gio and Rafe to let her run their haunted inn. She just needed to clean up her resume, practice her pitch, then pray they went for it…because her current job at a basic close-to-the airport hotel was mind-numbingly tedious and boring to the extreme, presenting her absolutely zero challenges.
 She’d spent the better part of two hours this afternoon adding more twinkle lights to the foyer because there’d been nothing else to do. Too many more months there, and she would turn into a legit zombie.
 A few weeks ago, Keeley had decided to throw a Christmas party, and it had been all her girlfriends had been able to talk about since she’d set the