“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, a sinking feeling settling through her for all the wrongs they’d done each other. “For being so insensitive. I knew what happened to Lucia was horrible. I knew I should make allowances for it. But every time you retreated, every time you turned off, I hurt so badly, I just wanted you to hurt like I was hurting. It became instinctual, reflexive. But it didn’t make it right.”
He shook his head. “We were both experts at slinging arrows. It became easier than dealing with what was in front of us.”
She caught her lip between her teeth. Stared out the window at a sea of blue, her ragged emotions begging her to stop. But to do that would stall them where they stood, suspended in a state of perpetual animation. It would not fix them.
“I know Lucia will always be in your heart,” she said quietly when she turned back to him. “I wouldn’t expect any less. The issue between us was the emotional distance it caused, the emotional distance you put between us. I need to know you are over her, Lorenzo.”
His cheeks hollowed. “I have let her go. I have moved on. That’s what this is all about, Angelina—moving forward. I’m asking you to do that with me.”
Her chest went tight. She knew they needed to let go of the past if they were going to make this work. But could she do it? Could she trust her instincts where Lorenzo was concerned? Could she trust that he had changed? Or was she setting herself up for an even greater fall than she’d taken the first time?
“Maybe what we need,” he said quietly, a contemplative look on his face, “is a fresh start. A blank slate. No ghosts, no animosity, just us.”
Her heart contracted on a low, painful pull. It was so tempting to believe they could recapture the good they’d had. That she could claim that piece of his heart she’d always craved. Because when it had been good between them, it had been good in a way nothing else could touch. And when it had been bad, he had eviscerated her.
Blood pumped through her veins, her breath caught in her throat. Suddenly her baby steps seemed like a heart-pumpingly, scary big leap.
“All of you,” Lorenzo said evenly, eyes on hers. “That’s what I’m asking for. A real shot at this. Can you give me that?”
She swallowed past a paper-dry throat. Took the leap. “I can try.”
* * *
Lorenzo put his emotionally exhausted wife to bed after a light dinner, then headed to his study to work. The logistics with Angelina’s mother had taken a big bite out of his week. He was behind and his inability to connect with Marc Bavaro, who had disappeared on a multiweek trip to South America, meant the acquisition was still in limbo.
Resisting the temptation to drown his frustration in a potent shot of something strong because it would also dull his brain with hours of work ahead of him, he fixed himself a cappuccino in Constanza’s steel marvel of a kitchen, returned to his study and picked up a report he had to review before his morning meeting, but the numbers blurred before his eyes.
His thoughts were consumed, instead, by his wife’s haunted face as he’d put her to bed. With the fact that he had clearly never known her. Far from being the spoiled young woman he’d thought he’d married who was incapable of compromise, she was instead a vulnerable, emotional woman he’d never looked deep enough to see. A woman who had gone through hell under the purview of parents who had, in reality, been nothing of the sort.
That his wife had been strong enough at fifteen to police her mother at parties, to keep up a facade for as long as she and Abigail had, to take her mother to rehab not once but twice, by the time she was twenty, little more than a girl herself, boggled his mind. It was courage on a scale he couldn’t imagine. Made him feel as if he’d just taken a hard shot to the solar plexus.
He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes, guilt twisting his insides. Twice now he’d failed to react when the most important women in his life had cried out for help. Failed to recognize what they’d been trying to tell him. Failed to protect them.
It shamed him on the most visceral of levels, raked across the dark presence that seemed to lurk just beneath the surface of his skin, searching for a way to the top.
Angie had always believed Lucia had his heart, that he wasn’t over her and that was what had caused him to hold back with her. Instead the truth was something far worse. If he’d listened to Lucia, if he’d been present for her as Angelina liked to cite as his greatest fault, then she would still be alive.
Agitation drove him to his feet and to the window, where he stood looking out at a floodlit view of Central Park. The darkness pressed against his edges—relentless, hungry. He would never forgive himself for what had happened to Lucia because he didn’t deserve it. But he could do things differently with Angelina this time.
He pressed a palm against his temple. If there was guilt for not being able to give his wife the love she so clearly craved, deserved, the love she’d never been shown, he would have to appease himself with the promise he would give her everything else. He would be there for her this time.
Because to allow his marriage to descend into the emotionally addictive union it had once been? To allow himself to feel the things for Angelina he once had? To experience more loss? Not happening.
Emotion had destroyed them the first time around, rationality and practicality would save them. That and the combustible chemistry he had slammed the breaks on in the Hamptons.
The lush, heady, spellbindingly feminine taste of his wife as she’d begged him to take her filled his head. He wanted to dull the edge, kill the need that drove him whenever he was within five feet of her. With a clean slate ahead of them, an agreement from Angelina to leave their ghosts behind them, he intended to accomplish that goal in short order.
He would have his delectable wife back in his bed, in every sense of the word. Would make this marriage into what it always should have been.
“DAMN.” ANGIE SCOOPED the bracelet off the bedroom floor and attempted to refasten it around her wrist. She had been late coming home from the studio, where she’d been putting the final touches on Faggini’s collection, which would debut at Fashion Week next week, not an ideal night to be running behind with Lorenzo’s parents coming for dinner.
The clasp slipped from her fingers again. She grimaced. Was she that unnerved by the thought of a visit from Octavia the Great or did it have more to do with the fact she’d agreed to give her marriage a real shot? She suspected it was a combination of both.
“Need help?” Lorenzo emerged from the dressing area, rolling up the sleeves of the crisp white shirt he’d put on.
“Yes.” She handed him the bracelet. “Please.”
He slid it around her wrist, making quick work of the clasp. His gaze met hers. “Are you stressing about tonight? You have to stop doing that. Everyone wants us to work, including my parents.”
“I’m not stressed, I’m late.”
“You’re not late. They’re not even here yet.”
He slid an arm around her waist and tugged her close. Smoking hot in dark pants and the white shirt, he made her heart thud in her chest. “I appreciate the fact that they are late, however,” he drawled, “since I have not had time to greet you properly.”
Her stomach clenched, heat radiating through her insides. He had a distinctly predatory look in his eyes tonight, one that suggested their adjustment period was officially over.
“Your parents will be arriving any minute,”
“Plenty of time.” He slid his fingers into her hair, cupped her scalp and kissed her. A long, slow shimmer of