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His father wanted her back in his life? She’d always believed Antonio De Campo had thought her far beneath his son, with her poor upbringing, but he had been too polite to say it.
“My father thinks you’re a good influence on me.” He gave a wry half-smile that softened those newly hardened features of his. “He’s quite likely right about that.”
“This is crazy.” Lillly shook her head and paced to the opposite end of the patio. “We aren’t even capable of pretending we’re a happily married couple.”
“You have a short memory, Lilly.”
His soft reprimand drew her gaze to his face.
“Six months. That’s all I’m asking.”
“I want a divorce,” she repeated, raising her voice as this insane conversation kept plowing forward. “What makes you think I would ever consider helping you?”
He tilted his head to one side. “What are you afraid of? That we have way more unfinished business than you care to admit?”
She squared her shoulders. “We are over, Riccardo. And this is not a good idea.”
“It’s a great idea. Six months buys you your freedom.”
“What other conditions has your father imposed?” she asked helplessly. “Are you to stop driving fast cars and dating international supermodels?”
He scowled. “Not one of those rumors are true. There’s been no one since you.”
She stiffened. “We all know there’s truth to the tabloids.”
“Not one, Lilly.”
“Riccardo,” she said desperately. “No.”
He stalked over, invading her space. “What is it, tesoro? Got plans with Harry Taylor?”
How did he know about Harry? They’d been so low-key as to be socially non-existent. “Yes,” she snapped. “I’d like to move on, and maybe you should do the same.”
He lifted his hand and took her chin in his fingers. “You forget we made a vow, amore mio. ‘For richer and poorer, in sickness and in health...’”
“That was before you broke it.”
A dangerous glimmer entered his eyes. “I never slept with Chelsea Tate. We’ve had this conversation.”
“We are never going to agree on that,” she bit out, throwing his words back at him. “Nor could we ever fake any real affection for each other. It would be laughable.”
“Oh, but I think we could,” he murmured, lowering his head to hers. “Even the thought of me spanking you turns you on.”
She pulled out of his grip. “Riccardo—”
He slid a hand into her hair and brought her back. “You went there, Lilly. And so did I.”
“No, I—”
He smothered her reply with a kiss Lilly felt down to her toes, deep and sensuous. He didn’t bother with the preliminaries. He simply took—kissing her exactly the way he knew she liked it, using every weapon at his disposal. Lilly curled her fingers into his shirt, intending to push him away, but she didn’t quite seem to be able to do it.
He pulled her closer, anchored her against him. “Ric—” she murmured as he changed angles and came back to her.
“Shut up, Lilly,” he commanded, sliding his fingers up her bare arms and closing his mouth over hers.
This time his kiss was softer, more persuasive than controlling, pleasurable rather than punishing. And something fell apart inside her. It had been too long since he’d kissed her like this, too long since she’d been in his arms, and God help her...of all the things they had not been good at, it hadn’t been this.
“Dammit.” She grabbed a handful of shirt to steady herself. “This is not fair.”
He slid a hand down over the curve of her hip and brought her body into full contact with his. The feel of his hard body against her made her shiver, remembering everything.
“Nothing was ever fair between us. It was like a wild rollercoaster ride we couldn’t get enough of.”
He shifted her between the hard muscles of his thighs and brought his mouth down on hers again with a look of pure intent. His rigid, pulsing arousal pressed against her, making Lilly ache all over.
No, an inner voice warned. But all that came out was a groan.
He dragged her even closer, a satisfied growl escaping his throat. “Open your mouth, Lil.”
Caught up in the pure, hot sexual power he had over her, she obeyed. She didn’t think about the one hundred and fifty people downstairs, or even what a huge mistake this was. She just wanted this kiss, this magic, the hot intimacy of his tongue tangling with hers.
Oh. She melted into him as her knees threatened to give way. It was like someone offering an alcoholic a double shot after months of abstinence. Pure hedonism. And she wrapped herself in it.
A flash of light exploded around them. She stumbled backward, disoriented, blinking into the bright light that kept coming and coming.
Riccardo cursed and pulled her away from the railing. “Dio. How did they get here?”
“A photographer?” Lilly asked dazedly.
He nodded.
She touched her fingers to her mouth, still burning from his kiss. Riccardo had security everywhere. It didn’t make sense that a photographer would be able to get up here. “You planned that,” she said flatly. “You set that up for your father’s benefit.”
“I set this party up for my father’s benefit,” he agreed darkly. “For the board’s benefit. Not that photo.”
She pressed her palms to her temples. She didn’t want to be back here. She couldn’t go on walking around like a half-alive person, going through the motions but never really feeling anything. She needed this divorce.
His face tightened. “What? Afraid the good doctor won’t understand a six-month hiatus?”
She shook her head. “The answer is no. No, no and no.”
He straighened his shirt and raked a hand through his hair. “We’ll make the announcement at ten.”
She turned her back on him and started for the door.
“I’ll give you the house.”
She stopped in her tracks.
“You’ve never wanted anything from me, but I know you love this house. I’ll sign it over to you at the end of the six months.”
Lilly opened her mouth to tell him where he could put his offer, but the words died in her mouth. The house would pay for Lisbeth’s treatment. Fifty times over.
“Tempting, isn’t it? Your dream house...without me in it?”
She counted to five before she turned around. As if any amount of money would be enough to convince her that revisitng their ruin of a marriage was worth it.
But she was desperate. And she didn’t have the luxury of time.
She lifted her gaze to his. “I will think about it.”
“Ten o’clock, Lilly.” His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Think of yourself as Cinderella, only your deadline isn’t midnight—it’s ten. And I’m the devil you know.”
CHAPTER TWO
LILLY SPENT THE intervening hours coming up with a million different reasons why she would be crazy to agree to Riccardo’s proposal. He was once again using her in his single-minded pursuit of the De Campo CEO job. He didn’t really want her—he wanted Lilly De Campo the figurehead, his perfect society wife who could smile and say intelligent things to the very intelligent people they met. And, dammit, her life was finally back on track! She had built up her practice, she had started to do the things she loved again, and she had a life.
Whether or not she was just going through the motions was irrelevant. She had been moving on.
Until that kiss tonight.
She touched her fingers to her mouth and tightness seized her chest. How could she kiss Riccardo like that when the same from Harry inspired only lukewarm affection?
“Which do you prefer, Lilly? Snakeskin or alligator?”
She gave the trendy young shoe designer who had cornered her and Alex a blank look. “Sorry?”
“I was asking if you prefer snakeskin or alligator... If I’d known you were doing this tonight I would have begged you to wear my shoes.”
If she’d known she was doing this tonight she would be halfway across the Atlantic!
“Snakeskin, definitely,” she murmured.
The other woman nodded and continued her relentless discussion of fashion.
She would be crazy to go back to Riccardo. But what choice did she have? The idea that the bank would lend her the money—more than she’d make in ten years of work—was laughable. Even in installments. Her parents were barely getting by on the farm, and although Alex had a great job with one of the city’s top PR firms they would never, collectively, be able to scrape up that kind of money.
She had the power to help Lisbeth. Her stomach seemed to go into freefall at the thought of what that might entail. The question was, could she?
Alex gave her an I need to talk to you look and politely whisked her away from the designer. “People keep stealing you away,” she hissed, dragging Lilly toward the windows. “What did he say to you?”
Lilly stared at her sister’s flashing blue gaze—the only thing that differentiated them as twins. Her eyes were a mirror image of their sister Lisbeth’s. And suddenly her guilt for never having been there for her younger sister made her next move crystal-clear.
She forced herself to smile. Riccardo had made it clear no one was to know about their deal. Not even family. There was too much of a chance for someone to say the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person. The press would blow it wide open.
“We had a really good talk, Alex. I—”
The music stopped. She spun around to find Riccardo standing at the front of the room, his gaze trained on her. She swallowed hard as he nodded for her to join him.
Judgement time.
She steeled herself and raised a trembling hand to push her hair out of her face. “I’ll explain afterward,” she whispered to her sister. Then she walked to Riccardo’s side.
Her presence there said everything.
A satisfied gleam lit her husband’s eyes. He raised a hand to quiet the room. The elegantly dressed crowd fell silent as every eye moved to them and hushed anticipation blanketed the air. The first marriage in the history of the De Campo family to disintegrate. A golden couple at that.
She was distracted by a waitress, who presented a bottle for Riccardo’s inspection. “The 1972 Chianti.”
A 1972 Chianti? The same wine as on their wedding? Her gaze flew to her husband’s, which was impaling hers with a burning darkness that seared her soul. He was really doing this to her?
What kind of a game was he playing?
The waitress passed each of them a glass of the ruby-red wine. Its deep, rich color was hypnotizing, reminding Lilly of the emotional blood the two of them had spilled. Her hands shook so much around the crystal she was terrified the wine was going to end up down the front of her dress.
Riccardo turned to face their guests, with a controlled, purposeful ease to his movements. “Lilly and I would like to thank you all for coming. You are our closest family, friends and acquaintances and we wanted you to be the first to share in our news.”
He paused. The room grew so silent you could have heard a pin drop. Lilly’s fingers tightened around the glass, her heart pounding in tandem with her head.
“Sometimes it takes a momentous occasion to bring true feelings to the surface.” Riccardo returned his gaze to her face. “For Lilly and I, it took contemplating divorce to realize how much in love we still are.”
A gasp rang out. Alex gaped at her from the front row, where she stood with Gabe.
Riccardo cast his gaze over the crowd. “Lilly and I are reconciling.”
A shocked buzz filled the room—the sound of a hundred conversations starting at once. Flashbulbs exploded in her face. Hearing the words spoken out loud made her knees go weak. But she kept her gaze trained on her husband’s and forced what might have passed for a smile to her lips.
Now her acting role began.
Riccardo tilted his glass toward her. “To new beginnings.”
Lilly lifted the glass to her mouth and drank. Her lashes fluttered down over her cheeks as the heady, intoxicating flavor of the Chianti transported her back to the day when her life had seemed poised at the beginning of a rainbow that stretched forever.
The day she had married Riccardo.
And at that moment she knew her mistake for what it was. She had never been, and never would be, in control of her feelings for her husband. Six months wasn’t just going to be self-destructive. There was going to be collateral damage.
* * *
Riccardo poured himself a two-finger measure of Scotch and sank down in the chair by the window, his gaze on his wife, who lay sleeping in their bed. She had swayed on her feet after the toast, her hands moving to her head in a warning sign that one of those migraines that had always terrified him was about to take her out. He was fairly sure she would have hit the deck had he not slid a subtle arm around her waist and hustled her from the room.
He had left Gabe in charge of winding up the evening and, although Alex had flatly refused to leave her sister, had overridden her and sent her home with his brother. There was still some of Lilly’s migraine medication in their medicine cabinet and the key to these attacks, he knew, was to get it into her as soon as possible and put her to bed. Which he’d done—right after she’d been violently ill in their bathroom.
He took a sip of the smoky single malt blend and moved his gaze over her face. It was ghostly white and pinched even in sleep, and for a moment guilt rose up in him. He had dangled the one thing she loved more than anything else in front of her when he knew she wanted nothing to do with him. But then again, he thought, his lips twisting, she hadn’t given him any warning when she’d walked out on him. When she’d called it quits on their marriage and left without even having the guts to face him.
A fury long dormant raged to life inside him, pulsing like an untamed beast. Who did that? Who took a perfectly good marriage with a few of the usual speed bumps and just quit? Who thought so little of what she had that it was easier to turn into an ice queen and refuse him than to talk it out?
The woman who’d turned into a stranger before his very eyes. The woman who’d taken a lover—a world-renowned cardiothoracic surgeon so highly decorated for his work that he made Riccardo look like the most heartless of corporate raiders. That was who.
