A Debt Paid In The Marriage Bed

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.

He watched the color drain from his wife’s face. “If you bothered to go home, you would know. So many countries are in the mix now, producing high-tech fabrics. Things haven’t been good in some time.”

She shook her head. “If this is true,” she said faintly, “why would you help my family?”

His lips curled. “Because I am loyal to the relationships I form, unlike you. I don’t run when things get rocky. Who do you think is underwriting your studio?”

She frowned. “I pay the rent on my studio.”

“You pay one quarter of the rent. It’s my building, Angie.”

Her mouth slackened. “I hired that real estate agent. Found the space...”

“You found what I wanted you to.” He waved a hand at her. “It made me sleep better at night knowing you were in a safe part of town.”

Her face crumpled as realization set in. “What are you insinuating? That you will pull the plug on the aid you’re giving to my family, toss me out on the street if I don’t agree to come back to you?”

“I prefer to think of it as incentive. We owe our marriage a fair shot before we relegate it to the history books. You come back to me, we try and make it work, I pull Carmichael out of its financial difficulties before it becomes a footnote in a list of great American dynasties. It’s a win-win.”

A win-win? She stared at him, disbelieving. “You would really hold that over my head?”

“You didn’t play fair when you walked out on me, tesoro. You just cut and ran. So yes, I will use whatever means required to make you see the light. To do the right thing.”

“I asked you to go to counseling. I begged you to. I tried to save our marriage and then I left.”

He ignored the stab of guilt that piece of truth pushed through him. “You expected us to solve things overnight. It doesn’t happen that way.”

Her fingers curled tight around the delicate stem of her champagne flute. “Putting the two of us back in a marriage where we’ll destroy one other is not doing the right thing.”

“We are both older and wiser. I think we can make it work.”

She shook her head. “That’s where you’re mistaken. That’s where you’ve played the wrong card, Lorenzo, because I will never become your wife again.”

She turned on her heel and left. He let her go, because he knew she’d be back. He’d never gambled on a deal he couldn’t win.

CHAPTER TWO

ANGIE RETURNED TO the party, shaken to her core. Palms damp, heart thrumming in her chest, a frozen numbness paralyzing her brain, she made a beeline for Abigail. Mouthing an apology to the well-known philanthropist her sister was speaking to, she extracted Abigail from the conversation and pulled her toward a quiet corner of the room.

Her sister eyed her. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Lorenzo is here.”

Abigail’s eyes widened. “At your engagement party?”

“Someone screwed up our divorce papers, Abby. We’re still married.”

“Married?” Her sister’s jaw dropped. “What do you mean ‘screwed them up’? Who?”

“Lorenzo’s legal firm. They forgot to file the papers with the state.”

“Is he fixing it?”

She closed her eyes. “He won’t.”

“What do you mean ‘won’t’?”

“Franco can’t have a baby. Lorenzo needs to produce an heir. He wants me to do my duty and put our marriage back together. Give him a baby.”

A gasp escaped her sister. “That’s outrageous. You’re engaged.”

“Am I?” Panic skittered up her spine. “If I’m legally married to Lorenzo, what does that make Byron? My illegitimate fiancé?”

Her sister looked dumbfounded. “I don’t know... Regardless, we’ll sic our lawyers on him. This has to be negligence.”

“He’s angry,” she said quietly. “So angry at me for leaving.”

“You did what you had to do. Lorenzo wasn’t an innocent victim in all this. You both had a role to play in what happened.”

Angie pushed a hand through her hair. Fixed her gaze on her sister. “Is the Carmichael Company in trouble? Is there something you haven’t been telling me?”

A guarded look wrote itself across her sister’s face. “What does that have to do with this?”

“Lorenzo says he’s given Father two loans. That he will bail Carmichael out of its financial problems if I try and make our marriage work. Incentive, he called it.”

Abby’s eyes turned into hard, bright sapphires. “That bastard.”

“Is it true? Did he give father those loans?”

“Yes.” Her sister’s admission made her stomach plunge. “At first it was the need to switch over equipment to compete with other high-tech manufacturers. But Carmichael never really recovered from the new technologies taking over the market.”

Angie’s breath left her in a sharp exhale. She’d been hoping against hope it wasn’t true.

Abigail’s lips firmed. “You aren’t doing this. Father’s been burying his head in the sand for years. He didn’t want to see the writing on the wall. It’s his problem to fix, not yours.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She swallowed past the lump swelling her throat. “You promised you wouldn’t carry the load alone.”

“You needed time. You were shattered when you walked away from Lorenzo. The last thing you needed to know was that your ex-husband was bankrolling the Carmichael Company.”

Blood pulsed against her temple. “And Mother? How is she handling this?”

Abby frowned. “Ange—”

“Tell me.”

“She’s become more unstable since the financial difficulties began. It—” She waved a hand. “It may be time to check her into a program. She doesn’t want it. She swears she won’t go, but I got a call from Sandra last week while they were on a girls’ night out. I had to pour her into bed.”

Emotions she’d long held at bay welled up inside of her, causing her throat to constrict and the knots in her stomach to twist tighter. “What was it this time?”

“Gin.”

She closed her eyes. She’d distanced herself from her family for her own self-preservation—because picking up her mother again and again had left her in a million pieces. Because she just couldn’t do it anymore while she’d been trying to pull herself back together after the demise of her marriage. But the guilt surrounding the difficult decisions she’d made was always there in the background, impossible to escape.

It wrapped itself around her now—tight, suffocating. For when Della Carmichael started sliding down her slippery, alcoholic slope, the bottom came fast and furious.

“Angie.” Her sister’s firm voice brought her head up. “I won’t allow him to do this to you. This is not on you.”

But Angie knew her sister was wrong. The only solution to this was her. Her convincing Lorenzo this was insane, that it would never work. Because she knew tonight hadn’t been the end of it.

* * *

Her dilemma was still raging in her head as she put down the phone the following evening having assured Byron she was fine—that the headache she’d pleaded to extract herself from the party just before midnight was gone. The same headache that had made her slide out of her fiancé’s kiss and leave him on her doorstep, a frown on his face.

Dammit. She gave up on the idea of work, pushed to her feet and walked across her bright studio space to stand looking out at the street. SoHo at night was still busy with foot traffic, the city thick with tourists at the height of the summer. A good thing for the boutique she ran below the studio that featured her work. The bell announcing visitors had been ringing all day.

The purple awning bearing her name whipped in the breeze below. Carmichael Creations. It rankled, more than she could say, to know this studio she loved, that she was so proud of, had been contaminated by Lorenzo’s powerful reach. She’d wanted—needed—to prove so badly she could do this by herself. To follow her heart and forge a successful career as a designer after Lorenzo had dismissed it as a hobby, when in fact, self-expression was as necessary to her as breathing.

She watched a group of young girls walk by, laughing and jabbing each other in the ribs as they pointed at a slick-suited handsome male in front of them. Her heart gave a painful squeeze. She’d been like that when she’d met Lorenzo—desperately innocent, utterly swept away by his powerful aura.

The memories flooded back, tumbling one over another in painful succession until she was standing by the pool at her parents’ legendary winter party in Nassau clad in the sexiest silver lamé gown she owned, butterflies in her stomach knowing the gorgeous, ruthless corporate raider Lorenzo Ricci would be in attendance. Her father had been doing friendly business with Lorenzo rather than serving as one of her husband’s hostile takeover targets, but Alistair Carmichael’s directive had been clear to his daughter—leave Lorenzo alone, you’re way out of your depth.

And she had been. But smarting from an argument with her father, needing to escape her miserable, lonely existence for just one night, she couldn’t resist. Every woman had wanted to catch Lorenzo, the most desirable widower in Manhattan, perhaps because none ever had. She’d taken her best friend Becka’s dare to ask him to dance and shockingly he’d said yes. That dance had led to a kiss in the garden and a hot, heated assignation that had shaken her innocent foundations to the core. She’d gotten her one night with Lorenzo Ricci plus way more than she’d ever bargained for.

She closed her eyes, an ache pulsing low in her chest. She’d thought she could be the one, the one who could make her husband love again because what they’d had had seemed earthshaking to her twenty-two-year-old self. That by offering him her unrequited love, she could help him get over his late wife, Lucia, who popular consensus had said he was still hung up on. Until Angelina had learned love was an emotion her husband reserved exclusively for his late wife, an emotion that would never be on offer to her.

Blood throbbed at her temples. She couldn’t change the past as much as she wished she could, but she could—would—fight Lorenzo on this.

She could postpone the wedding until her divorce came through. Move to a cheaper studio space. But that still didn’t address the financial difficulties the Carmichael Company was in. The responsibility that lay on her shoulders.

A chill crawled through her at the thought of the cold, hard stranger she’d faced on the terrace last night. Lorenzo had always been tough, carved by his experiences, shaped by the cutthroat scion of the Ricci family, Salvatore Ricci, but last night she’d seen a whole new lethal side of him.

Had her walking out on Lorenzo made him this heartless? Or was that just the man he’d become?

Guilt fought a battle with anger. Anger won. She’d been right last night—too much had passed between her and Lorenzo to ever resurrect their marriage. He needed to see reason.

She stalked to her desk, pulled her purse out of the bottom drawer and headed for the door. She was not letting Lorenzo bully her, steal her happiness. Force her back into a life that had nearly destroyed her because he needed an heir for the illustrious Ricci dynasty. She had grown too strong over the past couple of years to let him ride roughshod over her.

Her husband was about to find out just how much she’d changed.

* * *

Lorenzo was easy to find. Another hot, steamy Manhattan night bathed the city in a smoky heat as Angie stepped through the doors of her husband’s Park Avenue building. The doorman’s face lit up when he saw her. Federico’s gray brows rose just a fraction before he lowered them back into place and ushered her into the private elevator.

Lorenzo didn’t bat an eyelash when the doors opened on the top-floor penthouse. He waved her in as he talked on his headset. As if he’d been expecting her.

Dressed in black jeans and a T-shirt, he looked less corporate shark tonight and more deadly male, the jeans riding low, hugging his lean hips and muscular thighs, his black T-shirt skimming rock-hard abs he kept in premium condition at the gym where he pushed himself as hard as he did everywhere else.

Hell. She banished the frisson of sexual awareness that pulsed through her and walked past him into the luxurious dark brown and chrome space. Lorenzo in casual clothes, which made him look like a mere mortal rather than the deity Wall Street painted him as, had always been her weakness. Perpetuated her belief he had a heart when in fact he did not.

Eyeing the bottle of wine and two glasses that sat on the marble bar, she wondered if he’d been that confident she would show up or whether he’d been expecting someone else. Her stomach contracted into a tight ball. Bringing her back teeth together, she walked to the bar and looked for a bottle of sparkling water in the fridge. Lorenzo covered the microphone and told her to open the wine.

She did. If only to give herself something to do other than absorb the pure physicality of the man pacing the room. She poured two glasses of wine, picked up one and took a sip. Lorenzo rattled off a series of instructions for whoever was on the call and ended it.

“Scusami,” he murmured, as he pulled off the headset, tossed it on a chair and walked toward her. “I’m in the middle of negotiations for a company we’re looking to acquire.”

When wasn’t he? “You didn’t know I was coming,” she said, holding out a glass of the expensive French red he’d provided to put a physical barrier between them. He noted it with an amused twist of his lips.

“I apologize if you were expecting company.”

“I was expecting you.” Instead of taking the glass, he wrapped his elegant, long-fingered hand around hers and drew her to him.

Her heart slammed against her chest. “Lorenzo...”

He dipped his head toward hers, a dark glimmer of intent in his beautiful eyes. “We forgot our manners last night. Perhaps we should start again.”

Her breath caught in her throat. He was going to kiss her. She opened her mouth to protest, to say absolutely not, but his firm, sensual lips landed on her cheek instead. Lingered just a little too long for civility’s sake...

An electric current charged through her as he repeated the gesture on her other cheek, little pinpricks of heat exploding across her skin. Thoroughly flustered, she stepped back. “I’m not here to accept your proposition.”

He lifted a brow. “So you are here to...”

“Talk reason with you.”

“All right,” he said calmly in the placating tone he’d always used to soothe her like some high-spirited racehorse he’d paid millions for. “Over the wine, then. I’ve had a hellish day.”

Was she allowed to find that secretly enjoyable? She handed him the glass and followed him to the sitting area, where she sank down into one of the chocolate-brown leather chairs she’d always loved to read in.

“What company are you acquiring?”

“The Belmont Hotel Group.” He lowered himself into the sofa across from her, splaying his long legs in front of him.

The Belmont? One of the world’s most historic luxury hotel chains, it boasted boutique properties in some of the world’s most glamorous, exotic locations.

“I’m shocked it’s for sale.”

“It’s not.”

“Ah.” She took a sip of her wine. “A hostile takeover, then.”

“More like a reluctant bride that needs to be brought to heel. She wants to be there but she can’t bring herself to admit it.”

She eyed him coolly. “Isn’t it all the same? It’s your specialty, after all. Find a vulnerable company, strip it of its assets, then relegate the rest to the scrap heap. Symbolism, tradition, be damned.”

He cocked a brow. “Is this you setting the tone, cara mia? I thought you wanted to keep things civil.”

She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t care for what you do.”

“You didn’t always feel that way. You used to think it was hot, the power I wield. It was an aphrodisiac for you.”

Heat stained her cheeks. “And then I grew up. I saw the hundreds of people you put out of jobs. How you relegated iconic companies to the history books if you could profit from it. It was always about the almighty dollar.”

“Most of the companies I acquire would eventually fail. It’s only a matter of time. In Belmont’s case, they have lost sight of what the luxury traveler is looking for—their profits have nose-dived. Call it being cruel to be kind.”

“A wolf in sheep’s clothing is still a wolf...” She pointed her glass at him. “The question is, when is it all going to be enough, this obsession you have with owning the world?”

He rested his glass on his thigh. “What would you have me do? Rest on my laurels? Tell my shareholders I’ve proven myself—‘so sorry, but that’s all the profit you can expect this year...’”

She set her gaze on his. “You could try addressing the demons that drive you.”

His dark, spiky lashes swept down. “We aren’t here to talk about the past. We’re here to discuss our current situation.”

“Oh, that’s right,” she murmured, “that subject is off-limits. I forgot the rules of the game.”

His jaw tightened. “Stop baiting me, Angelina, and tell me what’s going on in that head of yours.”

“Your proposition is outrageous. To expect me to dissolve my engagement and come back to you, simply to ensure the continuation of the Ricci line...”

He shook his head. “I told you, it’s about more than that. It’s about both of us putting the effort into this marriage we should have in the first place. About living up to the vows we made.”

“You divorced me.”

“It was a mistake.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean ‘a mistake’?”

“I mean you like to run from your problems, cara. And maybe I was running, too. But given the current circumstances, given we are still married, technicality or not, we need to rectify that mistake. I did not intend on marrying twice. I certainly don’t intend on marrying a third time.”

She came back to reality with a crashing thud. “You don’t want me,” she said flatly, “you know that. You want a nice little Italian wife your mother will love who will host your dinner parties, charm your business acquaintances and greet you at the door every night in sexy lingerie. That would be your idea of perfection.”