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He turned to face the jaw-dropping view, blood pounding against his temple in a dull roar. He was shocked at how much the idea of Angie marrying another man repulsed him even though he had once convinced himself if he never saw his wife again it would be too soon. Perhaps because her vibrant, sensual, Lauren Bacall-style beauty haunted him every time he thought about taking another woman to bed... Because every time he tried to convince himself he was ambivalent about her, he failed miserably.
The conversation he’d had with his father before leaving Milan filtered through his head like some sort of cruel joke, had it not been of an entirely serious nature. The chairman of Ricci International had fixed his impenetrable, ice-blue stare on him and dropped a bombshell. “Your brother Franco is unable to produce an heir, which means it’s up to you, Lorenzo, to produce one and produce it soon.”
His dismay for his younger brother, his bewilderment Franco hadn’t told him this the night before over dinner, had evaporated under the impact of his father’s directive. Him marry again? Never happening. Except, he conceded with bitter irony, he was apparently still married. To the woman who had walked out on him and said he had no capacity to love. The woman who had stolen the last piece of humanity he’d possessed.
“Sir?”
He turned around. “Do you have any more bombshells to add to the pile or is that it?”
“That’s it. The deal is fine for the moment. We’re still negotiating the smaller points and you need to clear those last couple of tricky items with Bavaro, but other than that we’re on track.”
“Bene.” He waved a hand toward the door. “Go. I’ll take care of Angie.”
His lawyer nodded. “Do you want me to file the papers? Get the process started?”
“No.”
Cristopher gave him a stupefied look. “Sorry?”
“I said leave it.”
His lawyer left. A wise decision. He walked to the bar and poured himself a whiskey. Padding back to the windows, he lifted the glass to his mouth and took a sip. Began to feel vaguely human as the spirit warmed his insides and smoothed out the raw edges—raw edges that had been festering ever since one of the clippings in his daily press briefing had buzzed about his former wife...current wife’s betrothal plans to a prominent Manhattan lawyer.
He had pushed the news of Angie’s engagement aside. Refused to acknowledge how it sank its claws into his skin, dug into his insides—inspired dark, inexplicable thoughts he couldn’t have identified if he’d tried. Angie had ended a marriage that had descended to the very deepest depths of acrimony, a marriage many would have left for dead. So why did it still sting so much?
Why was he still so angry, still so damn angry it was like a disease inside of him, eating away at his soul? He itched he was so angry.
Why hadn’t he asked Cris to file those papers? Ended something that should have been ended two years ago?
He stared out the window for a long time, sipping the whiskey, watching night fall over a light-strewn Manhattan. Considered his duty to the Ricci line. The fifteen-billion-dollar acquisition deal in front of him—a deal that required every bit of his concentration—that would make Ricci the top luxury hotel chain in the world if he landed it.
The solution to his predicament, when it came, was shockingly, simplistically clear.
* * *
Why wasn’t there any air in this room?
Angie took the glass of champagne the bartender handed her, turned and leaned against the lit glass surface, surveying the cocktail-dress-attired crowd mingling in the elegant, whitewashed art-gallery space. Shimmering light from the antique chandeliers cascaded onto gleaming black marble floors, while directed lighting spotlighted the stunning artwork on the walls. A perfect, sophisticated backdrop for her and Byron’s engagement party, everything they’d envisioned to celebrate their upcoming nuptials. Why then did the room seem to have drained of oxygen as the night wore on? Why this restless pull in her veins she couldn’t explain?
She should be ecstatic. She had the career of her dreams as one of New York’s most buzzed-about new jewelry designers, the freedom she’d always craved from life as a Carmichael and a wonderful man waiting in the wings. What more could she ask for?
And yet something still felt...missing.
It did not, she told herself firmly, have anything to do with the man who haunted the edges of her happiness. Who had shown her what having everything looked like, then taken it away in the next breath. Because she knew now that kind of an adrenaline rush was for fools. What went up must come down, and in her and Lorenzo’s case, had come crashing down.
A searing pang throbbed in her chest. She took a deep breath of the nonexistent air. Perhaps that’s what she needed—oxygen to clear her head.
Byron engaged with a business colleague across the room, she seized the moment. Winding her way through the buzzing crowd, around the live jazz band to the elegant staircase that led to the second level, unused tonight, she climbed the stairs and headed for the small terrace that opened off the upper level.
Hot, thick summer air hit her like a wall of heat as she stepped outside. She walked to the edge of the beautifully landscaped space, rested her elbows on the railing and drank it in. The frenetic activity in the street below as cabs and pedestrians battled for supremacy on a sticky Manhattan night was a familiar refrain that soothed her senses.
Another sensory impression seeped in. Spicy, masculine, it was imminently familiar. Disturbingly, distantly familiar.
Cold fingers clamped down on her spine. Her heart a drumbeat in her throat, she turned around. Her brain flatlined as she took in the tall, dark-haired, olive-skinned male dressed in an exquisitely tailored suit standing in front of her. She lifted her gaze to his hard, dark eyes, as treacherous as black ice. Moved them down over Lorenzo’s prominent Roman nose, the day-old stubble lining his jaw, his beautiful, sensual mouth that knew how to wound and pleasure in equal measure.
For a disturbingly real second or two, she thought she’d conjured him up. That he wasn’t actually here, but was a product of the strange, restless mood she was in. That, in this fantasy of hers, he’d heard about her engagement and come here to stop it. That he still cared about her, because once, during the stormy complexity of their marriage, she’d sworn he had.
A panicked pulse echoed through her. What if he had? What would her answer be? She was terrified she’d cave like a ton of bricks.
She pressed her champagne glass to her chest before her shaking hands spilled it. Before she allowed herself to start conjuring up the fairy tales she’d always had about this man. That maybe he’d wanted her when he’d married her. That what they’d had in the beginning had been magic, instead of the reality that had materialized like a harsh slap to the face.
That he had married her for political expediency, to secure his heir, and when she’d lost their baby he’d lost all interest in her. Shattered her.
She took a deep breath, shifted her weight to both feet in an attempt to gain some equilibrium. “What are you doing here, Lorenzo?”
His lethally handsome face twisted in a mocking look. “No ‘Hello, Lorenzo’...? ‘You look well, Lorenzo’...or even a ‘How are you, Lorenzo?’”
Her mouth tightened. “You’ve crashed my engagement party. I hardly think pleasantries are in order. We abandoned those at about month six of our marriage.”
“Did we last that long?” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the railing. She forced herself not to follow the ripple of muscle in that powerful body. To acknowledge how he seemed to have hardened into an even more dangerously attractive version of the man she’d known.
He lifted a shoulder. “My apologies for showing up out of the blue, but I have business we need to discuss.”
“Business?” She frowned. “Couldn’t we have discussed it over the phone?” She flicked a nervous glance toward the door. “Did Byron—”
“No one saw me. I blended in with the paint. I did get a chance to listen to the speeches, though. Touching as they were.”
She stared at him, horrified. “How long have you been here?”
“Long enough to see you clearly have Byron roped and tied, as my rancher friend, Bartlett, would say. Fully enamored with your considerable charms...ready to let you run the show. Is it everything you ever dreamed of, Angie?”
Her blood heated, mixing with the panic fizzling her veins. “I never wanted to run the show. I wanted equal billing in our relationship—something you, in your arrogance and chauvinism, refused to give me.”
“And our good friend Byron does?”
“Yes.”
“What about in bed?” His eyes glittered with deliberate intent. “Does he satisfy that insatiable appetite of yours? Does he make you scream when you wrap those long legs of yours around him and beg? Because he doesn’t look man enough to me, cara, to deliver it the way I know you like it. Not even close.”
Lust slammed into her hot and hard. An image of Lorenzo’s beautiful, muscular body imprinted itself on her brain, filling her, pushing her to the limits of her pleasure, his voice a hot whisper at her ear, demanding she tell him if it was good, not satisfied until she’d begged to let him know it was, until she’d screamed, because yes, he had made her scream.
Blood rushed to her cheeks, her stomach contracting in a heated pull. She’d been so desperate for his love, for his affection, she’d taken whatever crumb he’d been willing to throw at her. In the end it had been all they’d had.
She sank her teeth into her bottom lip. Lied. “I have no complaints in that area, either.”
His eyes hardened, a dark glimmer stealing across their ebony depths. “Too bad it just isn’t going to work out.”
A frisson of apprehension swept through her. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, you see, there’s been a...hiccup in the paperwork for our divorce.”
“We are divorced.”
“So I thought. The firm handling the paperwork failed to file the correct papers with the state. The error was brought to my attention yesterday after I asked them to review the document.”
Her knees went weak. “What are you saying?”
“We’re still married, Angie.”
The floor gave way beneath her feet. She grasped the railing, wrapping her fingers around cool metal to steady herself. Blinked as she tried to work through the fog enveloping her brain. Married? She and Lorenzo were still married?
She swallowed past a paper-dry throat. “I’m marrying Byron in three weeks...in St. Bart’s. We’re eloping.”
His stare was bold, aggressive, like the predator he was. “Unless you plan on committing bigamy that would be impossible.”
She struggled to get her brain in working order. “You need to do something. Fix this. It’s your firm’s fault. They should fix it.”
An indolent shrug. “There’s only so much they can do. These things move at a snail’s pace. It could take months to push it through.”
“But you know people. You have influence in all the right places...you could make it happen.”
“Perhaps.”
Her blood ran cold at the hard, unforgiving lines of his face. “But you don’t plan to use it.”
“No. It would be an unnecessary calling in of favors.”
Unnecessary? A red mist descended over her vision. “I am getting married in three weeks. It’s all planned. How is that unnecessary?” She shook her head, pinned her gaze on his. “Are you still angry with me? Is that it? You want to punish me for walking out on you? For God’s sake, Lorenzo, you knew our marriage was doomed. You knew it was never going to work. Let me move on.”
He stepped closer, six foot three inches of far too intense male vibrating just centimeters from her. His expression, when he looked down at her, was full of leashed aggression. “Our marriage was not doomed. Our marriage failed because you were too young and selfish to realize that marriages take work. Effort, Angelina. Instead you put all your energy into rebelling against what I asked of you. Into ignoring what I needed.”
She lifted her chin. “You wanted a perfect society wife without a mind, a purpose of her own. You should have hired a beautiful robot to fill the role. It would have been the perfect match for you.”
His eyes flashed. “Don’t be sarcastic, cara, it doesn’t suit you. I liked your mind, you’re well aware of that. I offered you all sorts of chances to get involved in the charitable efforts Ricci supports, but you didn’t have any interest in them, no matter how challenging.” He pointed his glass at her. “As for being my society wife, you knew what you were getting into when you married me. What the reality of my life was.”
Had she really? Twenty-two, pregnant and wildly infatuated with her husband, she’d had no idea she’d been exchanging one lonely existence for another. That instead of finding the love she’d craved, she’d be giving up the very independence she’d been searching for, the dreams she’d had of being a jewelry designer. That she’d be following in her mother’s footsteps in falling for a man who had no capacity to love—the one mistake she’d sworn never to make.
She lifted her chin, chest tight. “I thought you, of all people, would understand my need to pursue my passion. My need to be something.”
“I did understand it. You had a fledgling online business. I helped you nurture it. What wasn’t going to work was to play start-up with a boutique that would take up the lion’s share of your time. Our life was too busy.”
“Your life was. It was never about my life. Yours was more important.”
“That’s not true.”
“It damn well is.” Champagne sloshed the sides of her glass as she jabbed it in his direction. “All you wanted was for me to stay in line, to look the part...to warm your bed. And even then, I was a possession to be enjoyed and discarded according to your whims.”
His jaw hardened. “Our intimate relationship was the one thing about us that didn’t need fixing, cara mia. Don’t sully it with your sharp tongue.”
“Didn’t it?” Her mouth twisted. “You never truly let me in—not in bed or out of it. Emotional intimacy was simply not on the table with you.”
A glimmer of something she couldn’t read passed through those dark eyes. “You are right,” he agreed in a clipped tone, “that I, too, bear responsibility for the breakdown of our marriage. We both bear responsibility for it. Which is why we’re going to fix it together.”
Her jaw dropped. “Wh-what?”
“Franco cannot produce an heir. That responsibility falls to me now. Since we are still married, it leaves me with only one option.”
Oh, no. She backed away from him. “That’s insane. You are insane. I’m sorry for Franco, but I am engaged to be married.”
“I’ve just explained why that’s impossible.”
She absorbed the hard set of his jaw. My God, he’s serious.
“Lorenzo.” She adopted her most reasonable tone. “It can’t work between us. We’ve been through too much. We want different things. I have a life I’ve built, a career. I’m not giving that up.”
“I’m not asking you to give up your career. We’ll find some middle ground on that. But I do intend to have my wife back, that part is nonnegotiable.”
She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek, the salty tang of blood staining her mouth. Once, she would have given anything to hear him say that—that he wanted to fix what they’d broken. In those first few weeks after she’d left, terrified she’d made an irreversible mistake, it had been all she’d wanted to hear. But she knew from experience people didn’t change. You couldn’t heal them no matter how much you loved them. People broke your heart over and over again.
“I won’t do it,” she said quietly. “You can drag the divorce proceedings out as long as you like, but you’re crazy if you think you can just snap your fingers and I’ll come back to you and deliver you an heir. I’m engaged, Lorenzo. I’m in love with my fiancé.”
* * *
Lorenzo absorbed his beautiful wife’s lie with the confidence of a man who’d had enough practice reading her reactions to know it was exactly that. A woman didn’t pronounce her love for another man and mean it while she ate you up with her eyes like she’d been doing with him. When he could tell he had every nerve in her curvaceous body on edge.
The thought of her offering that body to another man made his blood burn. Watching her make that toast to her fiancé when she was technically still his. When she would always be his.
He dropped his gaze to the thrust of her breasts beneath the delicate silk of her dress. Down over the swell of her hips...the length of her amazing legs atop stiletto heels. His body throbbed with a need that had eluded him for so long his skin went tight at the intensity of it. The injustice of it. Always Angelina. Never anyone else.
He returned his gaze to his wife’s face, studied the heat that stained her cheeks with a savage satisfaction. “You think,” he drawled, “that if I touched you, I couldn’t make you forget about him in about sixty seconds? Because you know I could. There’s this thing that happens between us, Angelina, that is undeniable. Pure biological chemistry.”
Her mouth tightened, a layer of ice settling over her face. “I’m not playing any more of these games. Byron will be looking for me. I’d advise you to go ahead and have your lawyers fix their mistake or I will sue you and your law firm for incompetence.”
A smile twisted his lips. “The thought crossed my mind, too. Then I realized it must be a sign we are meant to fulfill the responsibilities we assumed three years ago.”
“You are crazy.” She spun and walked toward the door. “Get out, Lorenzo, before anyone sees you.”
The antagonism in him darkened. She had walked out on him at one of the lowest moments of his life, left him to face a firestorm of Manhattan gossip, to break the news to their family and friends while she’d gone vacationing in the Caribbean. Left their marriage in ashes...
She would not walk out on him again.
“Oh, but I’m not finished.” His quiet words stopped her in her tracks. “You didn’t think I came here empty-handed did you? Without some bargaining power?”
His wife turned to face him, blue eyes apprehensive. “The Carmichael Company is bleeding money,” he told her. “Has been for quite some time. I’ve given your father two large loans to keep things afloat.”
She blinked. “That’s impossible.”
That had been his reaction when Angie’s father had come to him for help. That the Carmichael Company, an over two-hundred-year-old textile dynasty, an American icon with its name on the main campus of one of New York’s most prestigious design schools, could be in the red, deeply in the red, had been inconceivable to him.
