A Debt Paid in the Marriage Bed (Mills & Boon Modern) Read online

  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 seriou
s.

  “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. Lo
renzo 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?”